This article was taken from the September 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Stanford researchers have developed a way to see inside lab samples of brains by making them transparent; this 3D rendering is of a mouse brain.
The project, called Clarity, is led by 41-year-old bioengineer and psychiatrist Karl Deisseroth. "It's actually pretty hard to take the brain apart and then put it back together," he says. "And that big picture is important." His team developed a type of hydrogel frame so they could remove the brain's lipids (which provide much of the structure), while ensuring that "everything that's interesting is firmly embedded".
With the lipids gone, the brain is made clear. Fluorescent antibodies that bind to specific proteins are introduced, enabling researchers to paint cells and connections different colours to see how they connect. Deisseroth plans to use the method to explore how structure affects function in healthy and unhealthy animal and human brains. "I'm going to start putting this into our study of disease models, looking at autism brains, Alzheimer's brains," he says. "There are a lot of exciting possibilities."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
