Future of Neuroscience

Recently, neuroscientists met at the Experience Music Project Museum in Washington State to discuss the future of neuroscience. Hosted by Microsoft and the Allen Institute, the conference hosted 18 leading neuroscientists to ask the basic question: what’s next? To be sure, the field of neuroscience has a plethora of options available, but here some of the greatest minds tried to focus on certain objectives. The theme of the meeting seemed to be bridging the gaps between genes, cells, connections, and behavior. An all-star line-up of speakers presented their work as well as hopes for future research. 2002 Nobelist Sydney Brenner, also involved in mapping of the human genome, was one of many to speak about the nervous system and the genome. Nobelist Susumu Tonegawa from MIT called for a noninvasive method to simultaneously record the activity of many individual neurons in real time. Edward Boyden of MIT explained his lab’s efforts to use optogenetic tools. Scientists can insert light sensitive proteins into desired populations of neurons and then use laser light to perturb their firing. Stephen Smith from Stanford also wowed the crowd by presenting a 3D reconstruction of a mouse cerebral cortex created by “array tomography”, a technique developed by his lap. Researchers cut very thin slices of brain tissue, stain these sections multiple times with fluorescent markers for proteins of interest, and finally microscopes capture high-resolution images of each section, which a computer ties together. Also discussed was the new Human Connectome Project, funded by the National Institutes of Health. This ground breaking project, the brain-version of the human genome project, will map the brains of 1200 volunteers using several MRI methods, including a new technique called diffusion spectrum imaging (DSI). DSI provides detailed images of the axon tracts in the brain. Allan Jones, the chief executive officer of the Allen Institute, didn't want to speculate about any specific projects, but noted that whatever happens next, there will definitely not be a lack of ideas.

Check out the article from the October 8th issue of Science magazine:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/330/6001/164.pdf