Week 10 ELM 21: Neurotechniques

Flashcards covering the history, current methods, and future techniques in neuroscience.

Neurotechniques

Techniques used to study the brain.

Cranial Trepanation

Boring holes in a skull, practiced as early as 7000 years ago for healing and/or ritual purposes.

Experimental Ablation

Lesioning or destroying a specific part of the brain to study its function.

Producing brain lesions

Use a stereotaxic atlas, carrier and surgery to produce brain lesions using electrical current or excitatory aminoacids.

Sham Lesion

A “placebo” procedure that duplicates all the steps of producing a brain lesion except for the one that actually causes the brain damage

Histological Methods

Procedures including fixing, slicing, staining, and examining the brain to observe the location of a lesion.

Phineas Gage

Neuroscience’s most famous patient; his case was the first to link brain trauma and personality change.

Wilder Penfield

Used electrical brain stimulation on awake patients for the treatment of epilepsy and created functional maps of the cortex.

Motor Homunculus

A complete map of the motor cortex developed by Penfield through cortex stimulation experiments.

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS)

Involves implanting electrodes within certain areas of the brain to regulate abnormal impulses or affect certain cells and chemicals within the brain.

Computerised Tomography (CT)

Combines a series of X-ray images taken from different angles and uses computer processing to create cross-sectional images.

Positron Emission Tomography (PET)

Uses a radioactive drug (tracer) to show brain activity, useful in revealing or evaluating tumors and other brain disorders.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)

Uses a magnetic field and radio waves to create detailed images of the brain, frequently used for diagnosing various brain and spinal cord conditions.

Functional MRI (fMRI)

Measures metabolic changes within the brain, used to examine brain anatomy and assess damage from head injury or disorders.

Gene Therapy

Involves altering the genes inside your body’s cells to treat or stop disease.

Ex vivo gene transfer

Insertion of genetically modified cells.

Direct in-vivo injection

Direct in vivo injection of viral vectors into the target tissue.

Stem Cells

Provide new cells for the body as it grows and replace specialized cells that are damaged or lost; include embryonic, adult, and induced pluripotent types.

Neural Stem Cells

A self-renewing population that generates the neurons and glia of the developing brain.