 |
 |
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." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn