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Written by Carlos Florensa
“The human neuron networks form impenetrable jungles where many investigators have lost themselves”
Ramón y Cajal, 1923
ICONS had the pleasure to receive prof. Rafael Yuste to an informal coffee session on Friday 22nd of May. He is Full Professor at Columbia University and Co-director of the Kavli Institute for Brain Science, and shared with us his insights on the Brain Activity Map (BAM) project and the tools that have to be developed to reach its goals. In his opinion, photonics and nanotechnology have a bright future ahead in neuroscience and pointed out that the PhD students working at ICFO today could be a great match to tackle the challenges awaiting in this growing field.
What are the tools needed to study the brain at a whole new scale and who will be able to build them? This question could summarize the general atmosphere created during the coffee session with prof. Rafael Yuste. The discussed subjects concentrated around the role of photonics in neuroscience, the shift towards open-source cloud-based computational tools and the advances, goals and implications of the BAM project.
According to prof. Yuste, nanotechnology and photonics have plenty of opportunities in the field, way beyond microscopy and imaging. In particular, he believes they will become a invaluable asset for in-vivo studies, not only able to “read” but also “write” into the life subjects. It is already a fact that light can be used to trigger Action Potential (AP) and observe their spread in cells or specifically manipulate biological systems. An example are the tools developed with 2-photon stimulation and imaging with high 3D precision using Spatial Light Modulators (SLM), which suppose a huge improvement compared to other microscopy or excitation techniques used. Furthermore, light is a wonderful tool to parallelize both activities, being able to observed and influence many different parts of the system at the same time. Such capabilities will contribute to understand the Emerging System formed by the interconnection of single neurons. In fact, they constitute a turning point to reach the first two goals of the ones fixed by the BAM project prof. Yuste introduced to us:
- Measure every AP in every neuron of a brain circuit
- Manipulate every neuron activity in the circuit
- Analyze computationally and build models of such circuits
He also discussed with us this third goal. He commented on the use of Python in his lab, not only for ease the open-source collaborations but also to better access cloud storage and computing offered for example by Amazon 3X or Google Compute. The amount of data generated in neurology also launched the development of Thunder, a Spark based Large-scale neural data analysis tool. Also ethical reasons compel them to use open-source capabilities to readily disclose all advances in a field so deeply linked to human nature. As a summary, prof. Yuste told us that even if his research subject is supposed to lie on biology, the members of his team come from many different branches. In particular, many come from nanotechnology and photonics as these are the key ingredients to build the tools needed to understand the best kept secret of our organism: how does the brain work. He compared the BAM project with the Human Genome project, that put to work together scientist from many different fields to develop the technology needed to foster a revolution in science and in human self-perception.
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