Google Tech Talks November 21, 2008 ABSTRACT Personal Growth Series: Cracking the Neural Code: Speaking the Language of the Brain with Optics The technological seeds of a Manhattan project-style scientific enterprise, the optical reverse-engineering of brain circuits to crack the neural code, have recently been planted at Stanford. The brain is a high-speed dynamical system consisting of different players that are intertwined and that cannot be separately controlled using conventional methods. For this reason, until recently we have not been able to speak the language of the brain (with millisecond timescale and cell-specific resolution), and in 1979 Francis Crick called for a technology by which all neurons of just one type could be controlled, “leaving the others more or less unaltered”. Tools from the Deisseroth laboratory at Stanford over the past four years have responded to this challenge. These include optical technologies for controlling neural circuits, using precisely-targeted delivery of light energy of different colors that is captured by neurons using nanoscale protein-based antennae, resulting in controlled activity of just the targeted cell types with millisecond precision. Light is delivered by fiberoptics; while light encounters all cell types, only the desired cell type is light-sensitive and responds. Using different optogenetic probes, cells can be turned on or off with millisecond precision and in different combinations. These tools have now been used …
Video Rating: 4 / 5
Google Tech Talks September 23, 2008 ABSTRACT Under ordinary circumstances, healthy sleep is by far the most powerful determination of high-level performance and productivity. Three major characteristics must be present to define healthy sleep. They are (1) a sufficient amount and continuity to avoid sleep indebtedness, (2) absence or near absence of pathological sleep-related events and (3) reasonable synchronizing of desired time in bed with circadian predisposition. The nature of each of these three characteristics will be elaborated as well as their relation to performance. Speaker: Dr. William Dement William C. Dement, MD, Ph.D., is the world’s leading authority on sleep, sleep disorders, and the dangers of sleep deprivation. He is Chief of the newly created Division of Sleep at Stanford University School of Medicine, which is also the home of the world’s first sleep disorders center founded by Dr. Dement. Born and raised in the state of Washington, Dr. Dement remained in his home state for his undergraduate years at the University of Washington. He then pursued his graduate studies at the University of Chicago, receiving his MD in 1955 and Ph.D. in Neurophysiology in 1957. For more than half a century, Dr. Dement has conducted basic sleep research, investigated sleep disorders and treatments, and has launched a myriad of public education programs. From 1953 to 1957, he conducted the first studies leading to the characterization of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the …
Video Rating: 4 / 5
