The experimenters encouraged neuron production with small molecular agents known to affect the electrical properties of brain circuits. In 2004 Deisseroth and his colleagues at Stanford reported success in stimulating hippocampal stem cells to become neurons more often and more plentifully than they would without intervention. One avenue is to find ways to promote neuron production from stem cells in the hippocampus. And it is designed to change rapidly and it is designed to change in response to external stimuli.”ĭeisseroth is working on two approaches that involve stem cells. “This is how we learn and remember and adapt to our environment,” Deisseroth says. Although it is not clear why, it turns out that virtually all treatments for depression correlate with an increase in stem cells becoming neurons, Deisseroth says, even if that is not what they were explicitly designed to do. The hippocampus of every mammal naturally has adult stem cells and when these transform into neurons, those new neurons hook right into hippocampal circuits and alter how they function. Fixing the faulty circuitry that underlies those disorders might be a matter of tuning either the production of new neurons or the activity of new neurons in an area called the hippocampus, which plays a vital role in mood and memory, and has been shown to be structurally abnormal in all three disorders. Improved observations will enable research that may speed Deisseroth to his goal of improving therapies for depression, schizophrenia and autism. Deisseroth can observe how different stimuli, such as a dose of an antidepressant drug, can affect circuit operation. As dyed circuits light up and darken again in response to electrical activity, the action is captured by very fast, high-resolution video cameras. In the lab, the dye can be injected into animal brain tissue. The system uses a fluorescent dye that is sensitive to the voltages produced by brain circuit activity. It is also imprecise in that it only shows what is going on in relatively large parts of the brain, not in its small circuits.ĭeisseroth’s system allows for much more precise observations-currently in animal models of disease rather than human patients-because it has millisecond responsiveness and cellular resolution needed to view intact circuit operation in real time. The technology highlights what parts of the brain are activated by a stimulus, such as a sound heard by a patient, but the observations depend on changes in blood flow in the brain, which can take a few seconds. To watch individual brain circuits operate, Deisseroth’s lab is working to engineer a visualization tool that is faster and sharper than brain imaging systems available today, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). “What we’re doing here is tools, bioengineering based tools, to observe circuit dynamics and to control circuit dynamics on a millisecond (thousandth of a second) timescale,” Ultimately these efforts are meant to develop new therapies that will fine-tune the faulty circuitry underlying disease. The brain, when you get down to it, is fundamentally an electrical circuit,” Deisseroth says. By putting the two fields together in the lab, he hopes to develop treatments that are less painful, faster acting and more effective than the less precise treatments available today. “You don’t hear those two words-engineering and psychiatry-put together in the same sentence very often,” Deisseroth observes. Assistant Professor of bioengineering and psychiatry Karl Deisseroth is working to change that by applying the technology and precision of engineering to the subtlety of psychiatry. To study and treat these problems, psychiatrists need research tools and therapies, both drugs and devices, that are just as subtle and precise. The Catalyst for Collaborative Solutionsĭisorders such as depression, autism, and schizophrenia can be devastating for the people they afflict, but their underlying causes are subtle.Technology Transfer/Technology Licensing.Stanford Data Science & Computation Complex.Stanford Engineering Reunion Weekend 2022.Dean’s Graduate Student Advisory Council.Summer Opportunities in Engineering Research and Leadership (Summer First).Graduate school frequently asked questions.Stanford Engineering Research Introductions (SERIS).Stanford Exposure to Research and Graduate Education (SERGE).Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF).Additional Calculus for Engineers (ACE).Stanford Summer Engineering Academy (SSEA).About the Equity and Inclusion Initiatives.
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