News

Karl Deisseroth is leaving his mark on brain science one technique at a time

May 29, 2013

When Karl Deisseroth moved into his first lab in 2004, he found himself replacing a high-profile tenant: Nobel-prizewinning physicist Steven Chu. “His name was still on the door when I moved in,” says Deisseroth, a neuroscientist, of the basement space at Stanford University in California. The legacy has had its benefits. When chemistry student Feng Zhang dropped by looking for Chu, Deisseroth convinced him to stick around. “I don’t think he knew who I was. But he got interested enough.”

Deisseroth is now a major name in science himself. He is associated with two blockbuster techniques that allow researchers to show how intricate circuits in the brain create patterns of behaviour. The development of the methods, he says, came from a desire to understand mechanisms that give rise to psychiatric disease — and from the paucity of techniques to do so. “It was extremely clear that for fundamental advances in these domains I would have to spend time developing new tools,” says Deisseroth.

Read the full article at Nature

May 25, 2013

Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at Stanford University. His previous research included studies on the cellular and molecular underpinnings of brain physiology, and in particular, the biochemical networks which function during electrical activity in neurons to mediate memory storage. His current research is targeted toward understanding of higher-level cognitive function, including the mechanism of generation of subjective sensation from neuronal activity. His lab’s research goals include adapting molecular and cellular techniques to study the assembly and behavior of intact neuronal systems, using neural stem cells and novel tissue engineering techniques.

Watch the interview on The Science Network »

Major or clinical depression seems to alter the genes that regulate sleep and waking

May 14, 2013

Disrupted sleep is so commonly a symptom of depression that some of the first things doctors look for in diagnosing depression are insomnia and excessive sleeping. Now, however, scientists have observed for the first time a dysfunctional body clock in the brains of people with depression.

People with major depression, also known as clinical depression, show disrupted circadian rhythms across brain regions, according to a new study published today (May 13) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers looked at post-mortem brain samples from mentally healthy donors and compared them with those of people who had major depression at the time of their death.

They found that gene activity in the brains of depressed people failed to follow healthy 24-hour cycles.

Read the full article at Scientific American »

Finding of disrupted brain gene orchestration gives first direct evidence of circadian rhythm changes in depressed brains, opens door to better treatment

May 13, 2013

Every cell in our bodies runs on a 24-hour clock, tuned to the night-day, light-dark cycles that have ruled us since the dawn of humanity. The brain acts as timekeeper, keeping the cellular clock in sync with the outside world so that it can govern our appetites, sleep, moods and much more.

But new research shows that the clock may be broken in the brains of people with depression — even at the level of the gene activity inside their brain cells.

It’s the first direct evidence of altered circadian rhythms in the brain of people with depression, and shows that they operate out of sync with the usual ingrained daily cycle. The findings, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, come from scientists from the University of Michigan Medical School and other institutions.

Read the full article at UofMHealth.org »
Read the publication abstract at PNAS »

April 11, 2013

Combining neuroscience and chemical engineering, researchers at Stanford University have developed a process that renders a mouse brain transparent. The brain remains whole — not sliced or sectioned in any way — with its three-dimensional complexity of fine wiring and molecular structures completely intact and able to be measured and probed at will with visible light and chemicals.

This interview with Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, explains the work and how it fits into neuroscience research and other research applications.

Watch the interview on YouTube