Watching Brain Cells In Action 37
Roland Piquepaille writes "A Stanford University team has developed a microscope weighing only 1.1 grams. It is so small that it can be mounted to the head of a freely moving mouse to watch its brain cell activity. According to what the lead researcher told New Scientist, 'A lot of work has been done using brain slices, or anaesthetised animals — even using animals that are awake but restrained. But so far it has been impossible to image cellular-level activity in a freely moving mouse.' Not any more. And as mice are the 'preferred' animals in medical labs, this new kind of microscope could lead to new ways to study human diseases."
Now... (Score:3, Funny)
If we could just mount frickin' lasers to the heads of the mice....
Re:THIS TOPIC (Score:4, Informative)
The actual journal article can be obtained here
http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nmeth.1256.html [nature.com]
As always, it might require a subscription to verify this, but there are no attached video files. The authors apperantly have not put the pictures together into movie files, which is strange. Anyway, this is one case where the summary is not at fault: there simply are no videos.
Hey Pinky, are you thinking what I'm thinking... (Score:4, Funny)
Let me have a look...
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Save the mice (Score:3, Funny)
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They have brains. They rent them out to various corporations, so they're not in their heads very often.
Sounds pretty limited (Score:1)
Carl Petersen at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, is also interested in studying cellular activity in active mice. "It is a good advance," he told New Scientist, but the approach can't look at all kinds of brain activity.
The main problem, says Petersen, is that the brain scatters light extensively and so Schnitzer's technique can only capture images of cells near to the microscope. He also points out that the microscope lacks optical sectioning capability, a technique used to examine the internal 3D structure of tissue.
Makes it sounds like they can only look at what's going on at the very surface of the brains. Still, the ability to continously view any portion of the brain is a big deal.
Frankie and Benjy Mouse (Score:1)
"In other words," said Benji, steering his curious little vehicle right over to Arthur, "there's a good chance that the structure of the question is encoded in the structure of your brain - so we want to buy it off you."
"What, the question?" said Arthur.
"Yes," said Ford and Trillian.
"For lots of money," said Zaphod.
"No, no," said Frankie, "it's the brain we want to buy."
"What!"
"I thought you said you could just read his brain electronically," protested Ford.
"Oh yes," said Frankie, "but we'd have to get it o
Save the whales (Score:2, Funny)
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Cameras? No. Frickin laser beams... No... Frickin laser cannons! Forget sharks, whales are the ultimate in seabound laser destructive power. Sure, Japan and Norway would be gone pretty quickly, but... who cares! Whales with frickin laser cannons is the answer.
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1. Whales don't likely have language in the sense that we understand it -- I would liken whale language to a human baby's communication -- sounds that represent emotional state
2. This technology is a LONG way from translating brain activity into anything resembling useful information
3. Even if we could create a mind-link communication with whales, what makes you think they'd do our bidding?
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At least if we gave them frickin laser cannons, they could save themselves. It'd make "Jaws" look like "The Little Mermaid".
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whatcouldpossiblygowrong
If you visit Mistress Melanie's... (Score:2)
It's not wireless! (Score:2)
It's got frickin' wires going from the frickin' microscope to the frickin' outside world! They even mention the low friction commutator to let the mouse move around easily.
Come ON, how hard is it to add a wireless web server t this beast of burden? Then we could have a new record for the smallest mobile web server.
no! a roland post! (Score:3, Funny)
Damn, I thought Slashcode Bug 2135487 [sourceforge.net] was too good to be true.
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Re:no! a roland post! (Score:4, Informative)
I don't get it - why does everybody hate Roland?
Because he used to link to his own blog, not directly to TFA.
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Because without memes, Slashdot would disappear in a puff of logical discussion.
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He still links to his blog. But, he links to the articles themselves as well in the summary text.
I admit I was playing on the meme. If you check my history, you'll find out I usually abstain (or at least do so anonymously)
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jealousy. he gets posted to main page quite often, and has a blog he gets paid to manage. geeks are humans too, and are just as capable of petty jealousy. others have mentioned where the hate began, but it only grew, when he was still making money blogging and the geeks reading here are working at stressful it jobs trying to raise families etc. those who broke past living in the parents basement, never getting any dates part anyways.
btw, i never really got why people hate Roland but not taco etc.
In Soviet Russia... (Score:1)
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Just fry some eggs (Score:3, Funny)
All I need to do to see my brain cells in action is to take some drugs and then fry an egg.
According to the ads I saw as a kid this is an accurate depiction of my brain on drugs!
Religion (Score:2)
Narf! (Score:2)
Control diseases (Score:1)