SCIENCE BOND

Posts

Showing posts with the label brain

Ultrasound captures rat brain in microscopic 3D

They used it to scan the blood vessels throughout the brain of a live rat. Within a few years, the researchers say their system could reach the clinic and help with cancer and stroke diagnosis. For the procedure, published in Nature, the rat was injected with millions of very tiny bubbles, which reflect sound waves much better than blood vessels. "Ultrasound propagates easily in water - or in our organs, because almost 90% of our soft tissue is water," explained the study's senior author, Mickael Tanter, from the Institut Langevin in Paris. "But as soon as it hits a very small microbubble of gas, there's a big reflection. It's a very good scatterer of ultrasound." This is what makes these bubbles, which are already used for some scans in humans, a "contrast agent" for ultrasound.But the key to getting a sharp, super-resolution image - unlike conventional ultrasound, which is limited to capturing objects at millimetre scales - was...

Fit legs equals fit brain, study suggests

The King's College London team says leg power is a useful marker of whether someone is getting enough exercise to help keep their mind in good shape. Exercise releases chemicals in the body that may boost elderly brains, say the scientists, in the journal Gerontology. But they say more research is needed to prove their hunch.It is difficult to untangle leg strength from other lifestyle factors that may have an impact on brain health and the study did not look specifically at dementia, experts say.The researchers tracked the health of more than 150 pairs of twin sisters aged between 43 and 73 at the start of the study. Leg power was measured (at the start of the study) using a modified piece of gym equipment that measured both speed and power of leg extension, while brain power was measured (at both the start and the end of the study) using computerized tasks that tested memory and mental processing skills. Generally, the twin who had more leg ...

First time doctors breached the human brain's protective layer to deliver cancer-fighting drugs

The Canadian team used tiny gas-filled bubbles, injected into the bloodstream of a patient, to punch temporary holes in the blood-brain barrier. A beam of focused ultrasound waves applied to the skull made the bubbles vibrate and push their way through, along with chemotherapy drugs. Six to 10 more patients will undergo the same procedure as part of a trial. Experts said the experimental technique used at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre was exciting because it meant doctors might be able to give cancer patients potent drugs that otherwise would not work. The same non-invasive method could also be used for other brain diseases, such as dementia and Parkinson's. But many more safety studies are needed, they say. Animal trials have produced some results, but it is not yet clear whether the treatment would work or have side-effects. Blood-brain barrier The blood-brain barrier keeps pathogens and toxins away from the central nervous system...

Scientists have directly controlled brain cells using sound waves

Surprisingly, researchers have specifically controlled mind cells utilizing sound waves, in a modest lab worm. They utilized ultrasound to trigger action as a part of particular neurons, bringing on the worms to alter course. And obliging a specific quality to be communicated in the cerebrum cells, the system washes the creatures in modest rises to open up the sound waves. These confusions temper the procedure's guarantee for controlling cerebrum movement in a non-obtrusive manner. Writing in the diary Nature Communications, the scientists contend that their new system for controlling cerebrum cells could enhance "optogenetics", a procedure that uses light as opposed to sound. The issue with light is that it can't infiltrate through tissues - it is scattered rapidly. Thus, utilizing optogenetics to control mind circuits in a warm blooded animal presently obliges a fiber-optic insert. By difference, ultrasound voyages generally unobstruc...