Home » The brain? It has a print, just like that of your fingers

The brain? It has a print, just like that of your fingers

by admin

Neurons, dendrites, axons. Connections, cores and electrical conduits. It is a data center that keeps its kilo and 300 (on average) inside the skull. The brain. Fascinating, heterogeneous and multiform, the organ which in its countless and very different functions, always reserves a series of exciting surprises for the scientific world. And each is a new feature. For example, his imprint, the cerebral one, which is unique for each of us. Just like that of the hand. To interpret the still image of the brain, identified six years ago, is the research just published in Science Advances gives Enrico Amico, Italian physicist, “emigrated” first to the US, then to Switzerland, where he currently directs at the Epfl (Ecole polytechnique fédérale) in Lausanne, as principal investigator, a team of colleagues who have focused the investigating eye of the scientist: “The concept of the uniqueness of the fingerprint – he begins – developed, to materialize later, in the 17th century, from Marcello Malpighi. Today, magnetic resonance imaging allows us to block, by visualizing it at a precise moment, the brain of an individual while it is, motionless, in the scanner. My commitment comes into play when, as a physicist, I extrapolate the data and start modeling them, as is done with a complex system “.

“Here is the anti-fear center of our brain: from here it controls anxiety and phobias”

by Giuliano Aluffi


And the brain certainly is, a complex system …

“Indeed. And we study the connections between the different anatomical regions of the brain, investigating how they interact. And, also, about how and if they are in sync. A ‘network model’ is thus created ”.

See also  A gene therapy to fight blindness

How can this be pictured?

“It could be imagined as a large matrix containing different colors: yellow, red, blue. An agglomeration of colored spots. In technical jargon, each matrix is ​​called a “functional connectome” and represents a map of connections in the brain. To give an idea, the connectome is nothing more than the frame of brain activity, a real snapshot taken at the moment ”.

So mindfulness sessions can save us from stress

by Paola Emilia Cicerone


So every matrix becomes a treasure chest?

“That’s it. Any information we need is contained in these matrices. Thanks to them we can know if the subject under observation is awake or asleep, if he is watching a movie or if he is reading. In short, we have all his brain activities in front of our eyes ”.

Step back, tell us how the brainprint identification came about.

“The discovery is the result of the work of some neuroscientists at Yale University a few years ago, to be precise in 2015. They realized that each of us is characterized by a unique brainprint: they arrived at it by comparing functional connectomes generated by functional MRI scans of the same subjects, scans taken a few days apart. In this way, they were able to correctly match two scans of a given individual in almost 95 percent of cases. In other words, they have shown that it is possible to accurately identify a human being based on his or her brain print. And it is truly impressive, because the identification was carried out by relying exclusively on functional connectomes which, essentially, are just a set of numbers, of correlation values ​​”.

See also  Obesity, the secret of dieticians: the problem is not how much you eat, but what you eat

Knit? It’s good (also) for the brain. And a study will tell us why

by Donatella Zorzetto


Your study group went further, but how and with what objectives?

“Based on this data – and that’s what was published on Science Advances from me with Dimitri Van de Ville and other collaborators – we have decided to take another step forward in the exploration of brain prints. In previous studies like the one mentioned, brain fingerprints were identified using MRI scans lasting several minutes. But we asked ourselves: when do these footprints start to appear? After only 5, 10, 30 seconds, for example, or do they need more time? And then, do the different brain areas contribute to the brainprint of each of us at different points in time? Nobody knew the answer to these questions. Therefore, we tested the footprint at different time scales to see what would happen ”.

Getting what answers?

“We found at least two interesting things. The first, that a long stay of the person in the scanner is not necessary: ​​to identify the brain it can take about a minute and 40 seconds, because it seems there are spikes (peaks) of identifiability associated with the neuronal activity of that individual. But even more surprised us that different parts of the brain of each of us contribute to the formation of the imprint at different times. It means starting to glimpse the first lines coming from the sensory and subcortical regions, in fact the most primitive, associated with the perception and reaction to stimuli, while after a while the other areas appear, such as the frontal one, associated with complex cognitive functions. that begin to aggregate, providing the unique information contained in each brain “.

See also  Third dose of the Covid vaccine: doubts about side effects

Anxiety and Depression? Result of the complicated relationship between brain and intestine

by Marco Cambiaghi


But in practice, what would the knowledge of brainprints be useful for?

“We imagine the latter as barcodes of which there are ten thousand directions to explore. Well, the key question from the point of view of utility is: what happens to these footprints when a neurological pathology intervenes? Here, for example, it could prove to be fundamental for discovering neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, certainly one of the toughest, at an early stage. And on this issue, the subject of our current work, we already have some preliminary results ”.

An element that serves to recognize Alzheimer’s early?

“It seems that in this disease, the brain print does not disappear but fades, it presents itself to the eye as a blurred image. If this is confirmed, the technique could help identify so-called biomarkers for diagnosing Alzheimer’s. Then, we are also studying how the barcode, that is the fingerprint, changes under the influence of certain drugs. So we would have the key to understanding what the evolution of brain activity is related to ”.

.

You may also like

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Accept Read More

Privacy & Cookies Policy