Researchers make brain see-through
Scientists in the United States have developed a method to make a disembodied brain transparent, allowing them to study the organ’s intricate wiring without having to slice it up.
The feat in chemical engineering has been demonstrated on a brain taken from a mouse, and further tests shows it also works on brain segments from zebra fish and humans, it said.
The process, dubbed CLARITY, will revolutionise three-dimensional study of brains and possibly other organs after they are removed from the body, according to the paper, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.
“Studying intact systems with this sort of molecular resolution and global scope — to be able to see the fine detail and the big picture at the same time — has been a major unmet goal in biology,” said Stanford University bioengineer and study leader Karl Deisseroth.
The brain is the most important organ of the body, yet how its circuitry works remains largely obscure.
The view into the brain is blocked by opaque, fatty molecules called lipids that help form membranes around cells and bind the tissue together.
Scientists seeking access to structures deep in the brain have to make microscopic slices of the organ and then scan the images, slice by slice, before reconstituting an image on a computer.
CLARITY replaces the lipids with a clear, water-based gel, preserving the tissues intact while revealing the brain’s fine internal structure.
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