Robots that
reveal the inner workings of brain cells
New method
offers automated way to record electrical activity inside neurons in the living
brain.
(May 7, 2012) Gaining
access to the inner workings of a neuron in the living brain offers a wealth of
useful information: its patterns of electrical activity, its shape, even a
profile of which genes are turned on at a given moment. However, achieving this
entry is such a painstaking task that it is considered an art form; it is so
difficult to learn that only a small number of labs in the world practice it.
But that
could soon change: Researchers at MIT and Georgia Tech have developed a way to
automate the process of finding and recording information from neurons in the
living brain. The researchers have shown that a robotic arm guided by a
cell-detecting computer algorithm can identify and record from neurons in the
living mouse brain with better accuracy and speed than a human experimenter.
The new
automated process eliminates the need for months of training and provides
long-sought information about living cells’ activities. Using this technique,
scientists could classify the thousands of different types of cells in the
brain, map how they connect to each other, and figure out how diseased cells
differ from normal cells.