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MIT Shows How to Shut Down Brain With Light
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Mar 29, 2007 04:32 AM
from the men-in-black dept.
from the men-in-black dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The MIT home-page story today is about a way to use light to shut down brain activity. "Scientists at the MIT Media Lab have invented a way to reversibly silence brain cells using pulses of yellow light, offering the prospect of controlling the haywire neuron activity that occurs in diseases such as epilepsy and Parkinson's disease."
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There are easier ways (Score:5, Funny)
Re:There are easier ways (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Who wants to bet... (Score:5, Funny)
Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
Slight problem with their idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So, if we genetically engineer some people with Parkinson's or epilepsy to have these halorhodopsin neurons, we can give them a normal life as long as we find a way to shine light directly into their brains?
I think the article infers that we genetically engineer animals with Parkinson's and Epilepsy having the gene (that is, set up a disease model), then implant LED's into their heads, play with the lights and see what happens, then get a PhD and maybe even a Nobel Prize.
It's unlikely they would use this method in actual human therapy.
Re:Slight problem with their idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
I assume that the final human treatment, if any is arrived at, will be very different from what they are doing at present. Time will tell. In any case, a very interesting area of research, even if it is hyped a little regarding possible applications.
Parent
It's a wetware debugger. (Score:4, Interesting)
The news (to me) in the story is a non-invasive tool that can "flip" individual neurons into a binary on/off state in a controlled manner. I don't know what current "tools" are capable of, nor their level of invasiveness, but it seems to me a wetware debbuging tool such as this could lead to an explosion of knowlage that would make it worthy of a Nobel prize in the not too distant future.
Having said that, AFAIK indivdual neurons are not binary, their activity level is mesured as a "frequency". It would be interesting to know if the neuron's firing frequency can be controlled with more resolution than the simple on/off implied in TFA.
Parent
does it come in an ale? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, I guess that's cheaper than alcohol.
Politics (Score:5, Funny)
Hooray! (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one... (Score:3, Funny)
Damn yellowish incandescents. (Score:3, Funny)
Yet another reason CFLs are better!
Another ,,, (Score:5, Funny)
Requires halorhodopsin gene (Score:5, Interesting)
According to the article, the yellow light "silences" neurons that have been engineered to include the halorhodopsin gene found in certain bacteria. The light doesn't have the same effect on the neurons that you'd typically find in your skull.
I'm not sure how this would be used clinically to treat epilepsy. Perhaps by introducing the genes into cells in the affected area using a retrovirus?
Great! (Score:4, Insightful)
If yellow light shuts down brain cells... (Score:5, Funny)
We already knew this (Score:3, Funny)
With Light + *Genetic Engineering* (Score:4, Informative)
So not only would doctors have to get light inside the brain, they'd first have to genetically engineer the neurons to include and express the halorhodopsin gene. The right neurons: the ones that will later have Parkinson's Disease or whatever is being treated.
How are they going to guess which neurons? Which healthy person is going to let them genetically engineer their neurons? Those neurons are going to behave the same, though they're now expressing proteins that make them work like retinal cells?
Installing these shutdown hooks is a neat trick. But not for neurological medicine. Maybe for some biomechanics or biocomputation. Throwing genes into neurons for probing with light so violates our most absolutely personal spaces - inside our craniums and our genomes - that the cure is worse than the disease.
Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering certain patterns of falling boulders, as found on some mountains, for example, have the ability to bring death and people the suffer from Epilepsy (sic!). it makes sanse that certain patterns of falling boulders would also be able to reverse that effect.
NOT!
Common sense is not a substitute for knowledge. The two effects are not even related.
Parent
It's about brain implants for research purposes (Score:4, Insightful)
Did anyone read TFA? It has nothing to do with light entering the eye and hitting the retina. Forget the strobe lights!
This study is great, because it means we can study animals better. It means researchers will get much more useful information from animal studies (instead of operating on 1000's of rabbits or something, they can do heaps of studies on just one rabbit), which will lead to new and better targets for drug research, better drugs, and perhaps a cure - way down the track.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Unless you're that one rabbit!
Re:It's about brain implants for research purposes (Score:4, Funny)
You ain't from round here, are you boy?
Parent
Re:Or Wolfe (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)