TED2012
Carl Schoonover: How to look inside the brain
Carl Schoonover: 怎樣觀察大腦的內部
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對於大腦的理解我們有著很顯著的發展，但究竟如何研究裏面的神經元呢？神經學家和 TED Fellow Car Schoonover 使用了華麗的圖像來像我們展示讓我們觀察到大腦內部的工具。
Carl Schoonover - Neuroscience PhD student + writer
Carl Schoonover is a neuroscientist and one of the founders of NeuWrite, a collaboration between writers and neuroscientist. Full bio
Carl Schoonover is a neuroscientist and one of the founders of NeuWrite, a collaboration between writers and neuroscientist. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:16
This is a thousand-year-old drawing of the brain.
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這個大腦的繪圖有一千年的歷史。
00:20
It's a diagram of the visual system.
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它畫的是視覺系統，
00:22
And some things look very familiar today.
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即使在幾天也看起來有些眼熟。
00:24
Two eyes at the bottom, optic nerve flowing out from the back.
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兩個眼睛在下面，視神經將它們連接著後面。
00:29
There's a very large nose
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它有一個似乎沒有和任何
00:31
that doesn't seem to be connected to anything in particular.
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東西連接起來的很大的鼻子。
00:34
And if we compare this
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而如果我們將它與
00:36
to more recent representations of the visual system,
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一些最近的視覺系統的描繪做比較的話，
00:38
you'll see that things have gotten substantially more complicated
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你會看到在過去的幾千年中
00:41
over the intervening thousand years.
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很多東西都變的更為複雜了。
00:43
And that's because today we can see what's inside of the brain,
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由過去只能在外面看著大概的輪廓，
00:45
rather than just looking at its overall shape.
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今天我們能直接觀察大腦內部。
00:48
Imagine you wanted to understand how a computer works
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想像一下如果你想明白一個電腦是如何工作的，
00:52
and all you could see was a keyboard, a mouse, a screen.
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但你這能看到一個鍵盤，一個滑鼠，一個顯示屏。
00:55
You really would be kind of out of luck.
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那你真的滿不幸的。
00:58
You want to be able to open it up, crack it open,
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你會想把它打開，
01:00
look at the wiring inside.
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然後觀察內部。
01:01
And up until a little more than a century ago,
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而直到一個多世紀之前，
01:03
nobody was able to do that with the brain.
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沒有人可以如此對待大腦。
01:05
Nobody had had a glimpse of the brain's wiring.
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哪怕是一絲大腦線路的知識也沒有人有。
01:07
And that's because if you take a brain out of the skull
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而那是因為如果你把大腦從頭骨中取出後
01:10
and you cut a thin slice of it,
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並且將它切成薄片，
01:12
put it under even a very powerful microscope,
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然後放在最大功率的顯微鏡下，
01:14
there's nothing there.
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你也不會看到任何東西。
01:15
It's gray, formless.
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它是形體不明的一片灰色。
01:17
There's no structure. It won't tell you anything.
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你看不到結構。它不能告訴你任何東西。
01:20
And this all changed in the late 19th century.
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而這在十九世紀後期全部都改變了。
01:23
Suddenly, new chemical stains for brain tissue were developed
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突然，新的大腦組織的化學染料被開發了出來，
01:26
and they gave us our first glimpses at brain wiring.
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讓我們第一次能夠看到大腦的線路。
01:29
The computer was cracked open.
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電腦被解讀了。
01:31
So what really launched modern neuroscience
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而真正開始了現代神經學的是一個
01:34
was a stain called the Golgi stain.
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叫做高爾基染色法的染料。
01:36
And it works in a very particular way.
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而它以一種特殊的方式起它的作用。
01:38
Instead of staining all of the cells inside of a tissue,
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它只會染一片組織中大概百分之一的細胞，
01:41
it somehow only stains about one percent of them.
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而不是染全部細胞。
01:44
It clears the forest, reveals the trees inside.
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它在大森林中顯現出幾棵樹。
01:47
If everything had been labeled, nothing would have been visible.
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如果所有東西都被染上，那其實什麽東西也看不到。
01:50
So somehow it shows what's there.
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而它用某種方式展現了它的功能。
01:52
Spanish neuroanatomist Santiago Ramon y Cajal,
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西班牙的神經解剖學專家 聖地亞哥·拉蒙-卡哈爾
01:55
who's widely considered the father of modern neuroscience,
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被普遍稱為現代神經學之父，
01:58
applied this Golgi stain, which yields data which looks like this,
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他使用了高爾基染法並展現了如此一般的信息，
02:02
and really gave us the modern notion of the nerve cell, the neuron.
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而這給了我們神經細胞，神經元，的現代概念。
02:05
And if you're thinking of the brain as a computer,
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而如果你把大腦想成一個電腦，
02:08
this is the transistor.
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它便是電晶體。
02:10
And very quickly Cajal realized
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很快的，卡哈爾意識到
02:12
that neurons don't operate alone,
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神經元並不單獨的運作，
02:14
but rather make connections with others
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而是與其他神經元連成
02:16
that form circuits just like in a computer.
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像電腦一樣的電路。
02:19
Today, a century later, when researchers want to visualize neurons,
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在一個世紀後的今天，當研究員們想要看神經元的時候，
02:22
they light them up from the inside rather than darkening them.
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他們將它們從內部亮起，而不是使它們變的更暗。
02:25
And there's several ways of doing this.
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它有幾種方法。
02:26
But one of the most popular ones
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但最受歡迎的一個
02:28
involves green fluorescent protein.
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要用到螢光蛋白。
02:30
Now green fluorescent protein,
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這種從一種生物發光的海蜇中
02:31
which oddly enough comes from a bioluminescent jellyfish,
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得來的綠色螢光蛋白
02:35
is very useful.
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非常的有用。
02:36
Because if you can get the gene for green fluorescent protein
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因為如果你能夠得到這種綠色螢光蛋白的基因
02:39
and deliver it to a cell,
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並將它植入一個細胞，
02:40
that cell will glow green --
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這個細胞會發出綠色的螢光 --
02:42
or any of the many variants now of green fluorescent protein,
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如果你使用綠色螢光蛋白的其他變體，
02:46
you get a cell to glow many different colors.
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你可以讓細胞發出不同顏色的螢光。
02:47
And so coming back to the brain,
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回到大腦，
02:49
this is from a genetically engineered mouse called "Brainbow."
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這是從一個叫做“腦虹”的改基因老鼠。
02:53
And it's so called, of course,
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這是因為，當然，
02:54
because all of these neurons are glowing different colors.
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所有的這些神經元都在發出不同顏色的螢光。
02:58
Now sometimes neuroscientists need to identify
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有些時候神經學家需要識別出
03:01
individual molecular components of neurons, molecules,
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特定的神經元的分子部構，
03:04
rather than the entire cell.
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而不是整個細胞。
03:06
And there's several ways of doing this,
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這也有幾種方式可以達成，
03:08
but one of the most popular ones
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但最受歡迎的一種
03:09
involves using antibodies.
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使用到了抗體。
03:11
And you're familiar, of course,
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你肯定對於
03:13
with antibodies as the henchmen of the immune system.
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免疫系統的抗體非常熟悉。
03:16
But it turns out that they're so useful to the immune system
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而它們在免疫系統中如此的重要是
03:18
because they can recognize specific molecules,
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因為它們可以識別特定的分子，
03:21
like, for example, the code protein
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比如一個侵入身體的病毒
03:23
of a virus that's invading the body.
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的外層蛋白。
03:25
And researchers have used this fact
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研究員們用這種功能
03:27
in order to recognize specific molecules inside of the brain,
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來識別大腦中特定的分子，
03:32
recognize specific substructures of the cell
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或者認出細胞的特定結構
03:34
and identify them individually.
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并單獨的識別它們。
03:37
And a lot of the images I've been showing you here are very beautiful,
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我展示的很多的圖像都非常美麗，
03:40
but they're also very powerful.
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但它們同時也很厲害。
03:41
They have great explanatory power.
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它們可以解釋很多東西。
03:43
This, for example, is an antibody staining
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比如說這個，它是經過對血清素運輸分子的
03:45
against serotonin transporters in a slice of mouse brain.
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抗體染色的的一片老鼠大腦。
03:49
And you've heard of serotonin, of course,
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你應該在談論像憂鬱和焦慮癥一樣的病時
03:50
in the context of diseases like depression and anxiety.
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聽說過血清素。
03:53
You've heard of SSRIs,
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你也聽說過 SSRIs(選擇性血清素回收抑制劑)，
03:55
which are drugs that are used to treat these diseases.
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這種藥物被用來治療這些病。
03:57
And in order to understand how serotonin works,
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而如果想明白血清素是怎麼起作用的，
04:00
it's critical to understand where the serontonin machinery is.
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我們必須先明白血清素的部位在哪裡。
04:03
And antibody stainings like this one
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而像這個的抗體染色
04:05
can be used to understand that sort of question.
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可以被用來解答類似的問題。
04:09
I'd like to leave you with the following thought:
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我想為你們留下這樣一個信息：
04:11
Green fluorescent protein and antibodies
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綠色螢光蛋白和抗體
04:14
are both totally natural products at the get-go.
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都是完全的自然產品。
04:17
They were evolved by nature
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它們從自然演化而來，
04:20
in order to get a jellyfish to glow green for whatever reason,
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以便讓一個海蜇因為一些原因可以發出綠色的螢光，
04:22
or in order to detect the code protein of an invading virus, for example.
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或者來發現一個入侵的病毒的外層蛋白。
04:27
And only much later did scientists come onto the scene
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而在很久很久以後，科學家才發現
04:30
and say, "Hey, these are tools,
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並說，“這些都是工具，
04:32
these are functions that we could use
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我們可以把它們的功用
04:34
in our own research tool palette."
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加入到我們研究的手段中。”
04:36
And instead of applying feeble human minds
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而與其用有限的大腦來
04:39
to designing these tools from scratch,
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從頭設計這些工具，
04:41
there were these ready-made solutions right out there in nature
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這些被做好的答案已經出現在自然
04:44
developed and refined steadily for millions of years
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並用了幾百萬年的時間來發展和穩定下來。
04:47
by the greatest engineer of all.
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自然是最偉大的工程師。
04:49
Thank you.
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謝謝。
04:50
(Applause)
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（掌聲）
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Carl Schoonover - Neuroscience PhD student + writerCarl Schoonover is a neuroscientist and one of the founders of NeuWrite, a collaboration between writers and neuroscientist.
Why you should listen
Carl is a neuroscience PhD candidate at Columbia University, where he works on microanatomy and electrophysiology of rodent somatosensory cortex. He the author of Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century, and has written for the New York Times, Le Figaro, the Huffington Post, Science, Scientific American, Design Observer, and Boing Boing. In 2008 he cofounded NeuWrite, a collaborative working group for scientists, writers, and those in between. He hosts a radio show on WkCR 89.9FM, which focuses on opera and classical music, and their relationship to the brain.
Carl Schoonover | Speaker | TED.com