SOURCE:   The San Diego Union-Tribune
 October 22, 2004 Friday
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. B-1

HEADLINE: A brainstorming hub;
San Diego now a world center for research in neuroscience

BYLINE: Bruce Lieberman, STAFF WRITER

 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:

   o 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.

   o 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.

   o 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.

   o 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.

   o 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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