Hi there, this is the first post of my science blog. I personally think science is absolutely amazing. Humanities proudest achievement. Science stems from the word "scientia" which is latin for knowledge. It is the rational, logical process by which we, as intelligent apes, attempt to further understand the mechanics of this universe. In this light, I believe science is for sharing, so that all other intelligent apes can marvel at the beauty and complexity of this funny old world we live. However, to fully comprehend the published literature and to critically assess the findings and methodology is basically like learning another language for most people. So I thought that as a budding PhD student, constantly reading and critically assessing literature, I would write a weekly (to start with) blog post where I find a rad piece of science and serve it in an easily digestible piece of writing in order to share it with as many folks as possible with the goal of engaging the reader, not alienating the reader.
So to start with I have written a small piece on a paper that was published in the May edition of nature. It's a stunning piece of science at the crossroads between engineering, science and sheer awesomeness.
The authors (Chung et al.) have devised a methodology that allows an intact brain to become transparent. This isn't useful in itself, but when combined with other biochemical techniques that can stain particular types of cells, or a particular neuron or a specific region of the brain, this is where the magic happens. The authors created a 3-D image of a mouse brain seen here:
What gives the brain is "creamy" colour is the fat content of the cells, or the 'lipids'. Without going into the technical details, the technique (dubbed 'CLARITY') works by immersing the brain into a liquid over the course of a couple of days. During this time, the lipids are removed and replaced with a transparent 'hydrogel' that will maintain the structure of the brain but will remain clear. The authors were even able to apply the technique to a human brain that was preserved 6 years ago.
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| Figure taken from Chung et al. (2013) |
The technique will allow scientists to trace connections throughout the brain and according to the authors even allow visualisation of two paired neurons either side of the synapse (the area where the two neurons connect and communicate).
As this technique becomes widespread and gets combined with other new and existing visualisation techniques, it will revolutionise how we study the brain, the most complex thing known to man.
Science. Is. Rad.
