<\/p>\n… This week marks the publication of a new tool that may alter the way we look at the brain. Karl Deisseroth and his colleagues at Stanford University have developed a method they call CLARITY. Yes, CLARITY is an acronym, for Clear Lipid-exchanged Anatomically Rigid Imaging\/immunostaining-compatible Tissue hYdrogel. By replacing the brain’s fat with a clear gel, CLARITY turns the opaque and impenetrable brain into a transparent and permeable structure. Most important, the hydrogel holds the brain’s anatomy intact. And because the hydrogel is permeable, the brain can be stained to localize proteins, neurotransmitters, and genes at a high resolution [see images below]. Unlike other recent breakthroughs in neuroanatomy, this one can be used in human brains…<\/p>\n
CLARITY arrives only a week into the new BRAIN Initiative, announced by President Obama on April 2nd. Yes, BRAIN is another acronym — for Brain Research for Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies. With some 200 neuroscientists in the East Room of the White House, the President declared, “…there is this enormous mystery waiting to be unlocked, and the BRAIN Initiative will change that by giving scientists the tools they need to get a dynamic picture of the brain in action and better understand how we think and how we learn and how we remember. And that knowledge could be — will be — transformative”…<\/p>\n
The new BRAIN Initiative, building on these recent advances, could not come at a better time. Several recent reports have emphasized the increase in prevalence and the increasing costs of brain disorders, from autism to Alzheimer’s disease. The World Health Organization estimates that neuropsychiatric diseases in the developed world are already the leading source of medical disability. A recent report from the World Economic Forum projects that health care for mental disorders will account for the greatest expense among health care costs of all non-communicable diseases in the coming decades, greater than cancer, diabetes, and pulmonary disease put together. Given the contribution of mental disorders to these other medical diseases and recognizing our still limited understanding of the brain, you can see why the President called for “this next great American project.”<\/font><\/p>\nIf CLARITY is a predictor, the next few years could be a period of rapid new insights into brain structure and function. As Dyson said, “new directions in science are launched by new tools.” One can barely begin to imagine how tools like CLARITY will change our concepts of how the brain works in health and disease.<\/p>\n
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