The source of this article is San Diego Union-Tribune: http://tinyurl.com/69sep

A brainstorming hub


San Diego now a world center for research in neuroscience
By Bruce Lieberman
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
October 22, 2004

In a lab at UCSD, Don Cleveland works on Lou Gehrig's disease.
Fred Gage, at the Salk Institute, looks at how the brain remodels and 
repairs itself.

A few blocks north on Torrey Pines Road, Evan Snyder of The Burnham 
Institute studies how stem cells might someday replace nerve cells ravaged 
by Parkinson's disease.

These scientists and many others have built San Diego into a world center 
for brain research.

Tomorrow, they will be joined by an estimated 30,000 researchers gathering 
in San Diego for the 34th annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

The conference, which will continue through Wednesday, will profile the 
latest discoveries about how the brain develops, grows and ages; the biology 
behind depression, addiction and schizophrenia; the science of 
consciousness; what drives brain diseases; and many other topics.

"There are two big problems in science, one of the brain, and the other of 
the universe," said Salk researcher Stephen Heinemann, who studies the 
neuroscience of memory and is president-elect of the Society for Neuroscience.

"It turns out the brain is the most complicated thing we know, other than 
the universe."


Research once limited
Neuroscience is a vast field. It studies molecules that drive brain 
chemistry and cells that build the brain's interior architecture and looks 
at how parts of the brain and nervous system interact to create memory and 
thought.
For much of the last century, brain research was limited to what autopsies 
could reveal and what psychology could determine about human behavior.

With the discovery of DNA's structure in 1953 and the birth of molecular 
biology, that changed. Scientists now explore the brain on scales down to 
the genes inside individual brain cells. Imaging technology has begun to 
reveal how brain cells communicate with one another to process vision, 
hearing, taste, smell, touch and thought.

Many participants in the neuroscience conference will be visiting the city 
where they received their education, and where they continue close 
collaborations with colleagues who live and work here.

UCSD's graduate program in neuroscience – ranked No. 1 in the country by the 
National Research Council – has served as a crossroads for San Diego's 
network of brain-science laboratories.

"Neuroscience in San Diego is as strong or stronger than anywhere else in 
the world," said Alzheimer's researcher Stuart Lipton, who moved his lab – 
with 24 scientists – from Harvard University to Burnham five years ago.

Basic brain research here is focused at UCSD, the Salk and Burnham 
institutes, The Scripps Research Institute and The Neurosciences Institute.

The research here has received at least $120 million in public and private 
grants over the past year. The vast majority of the funding comes from the 
National Institutes of Health.

On Oct. 13, the National Institute on Aging announced a $60 million, 
five-year initiative to test whether brain imaging technologies can be 
combined to track the progression of Alzheimer's disease. UCSD will be in 
charge of managing the huge amounts of computer data that the project will 
generate.

UCSD already is involved in a $54 million project to evaluate five clinical 
trials to fight Alzheimer's.


Study of addiction
The neuroscience of addiction is another strong area of study in San Diego. 
Floyd Bloom of The Scripps Research Institute studies the biological 
triggers that transform a person from an occasional user of alcohol, 
marijuana, cocaine and other drugs into an addict.
"We're finding common principles of dependency . . . (the) turning on of 
certain genes that prolong certain actions of the drug," Bloom said. By 
understanding the genetic basis for addiction, new treatments could someday 
attack addiction at its biological source, he said.

Other recent work in San Diego spans the entire field:

 Scripps researcher Ulrich Mueller has investigated a gene responsible for 
converting sound waves in the inner ear into electrical signals to be 
interpreted by the brain. Mutations in the gene have been associated with 
some forms of deafness.

 UCSD's Nicholas Spitzer has found that altering electrical activity in the 
brain can change the chemicals they use to communicate with one another. The 
finding could someday lead to new treatments for mood and learning disorders.

 Scripps researchers Sheng Ding and Peter Schultz have helped identify a 
synthetic molecule that prompts embryonic stem cells from mice to grow into 
brain cells – a discovery important for scientists seeking to use stem cells 
as replacement cells for diseased tissue in the brain.

 At UCSD, Anirvan Ghosh identified a gene that appears critical for 
structural changes in the early developing brain. The gene was found to act 
as a switch that turned on and off other genes to promote new connections 
between brain cells. The discovery could someday provide new insight into 
certain types of learning disorders.

 UCSD's Mark Ellisman is coordinating a nationwide effort to build a 
database on neuroanatomy and brain diseases. Researchers linked by a 
computer network eventually will share high-resolution brain images to study 
multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other brain 
and nervous-system diseases.

As scientists are able to capture images of the brain at ever smaller 
scales, they are sure to gain insights, Ellisman said.

"The challenge for us is putting all of those pieces in place – 
understanding how cells work as assemblies, and how those assemblies give 
rise to complex behavior," he said.

"(That's) the basis for how the nervous system changes with experience, 
learning, memory and aging, and repairs itself or doesn't in the face of 
trauma or disease."


Brain-mind connection
Two major initiatives in San Diego announced over the past year will help 
scientists learn more about how the physiology of the brain – the chemicals 
and cell-to-cell interactions – gives rise to a conscious, thinking mind.
Last December, the Joan and Irwin Jacobs family donated $7 million to the 
Salk Institute to establish The Crick-Jacobs Center for Computational and 
Theoretical Biology, which will study how genes influence brain functions, 
from the most basic level to the complexities of human behavior.

The late Francis Crick, who helped discover the structure of DNA, championed 
the study of neuroscience at Salk after moving there in 1976.

UCSD announced in March that it had received $7.5 million to establish The 
Kavli Brain & Mind Institute. Funded by industrialist Fred Kavli, the 
institute will study how genes govern the life of the brain.

The most challenging questions for neuroscientists in coming years might 
involve how the brain creates consciousness, personality and language.

Finding answers could someday help society cope better with mental illness, 
said Terry Sejnowski of the Salk.

"There's a whole host of mental impairments and ways of dealing with things 
like violence," Sejnowski said. "Why is it that people are killing each 
other? Why is it that people abuse children?

"There are so many problems that we have in our society that afflict 
everybody's lives which should be amenable to some of these discoveries."

Neuroscientists say they eventually will conquer the brain.

"I don't think there are any limitations," Spitzer said. "I do think at one 
point we will be able to know it all."

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