How does an autistic child take in information when he sits in a classroom abuzz with social activity? How long does it take someone with multiple sclerosis, which slows activity in the brain, to process the light bouncing off the windshield while she drives?
Until recently, the answers to basic questions of how diseases affect the brain â much less the ways to treat them â were lost to the limitations on how scientists could study brain function under real-world conditions. Most technology immobilized subjects inside big, noisy machines or tethered them to computers that made it impossible to simulate what it's really like to live and interact in a complex world.
But now UC San Francisco neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley, MD, PhD, is hoping to paint a fuller picture of what is happening in the minds and bodies of those suffering from brain disease with his new lab, Neuroscape, which bridges the worlds of neuroscience and high-tech.
In the Neuroscape lab, wireless and mobile technologies set research participants free to move around and interact inside 3-D environments, while scientists make functional recordings with an array of technologies. Gazzaley hopes this will bring his field closer to understanding how complex neurological and psychiatric diseases really work and help doctors like him repurpose technologies built for fitness or fun into targeted therapies for their patients.
...The Neuroscape lab will be available to all UCSF researchers who study the brain. And Gazzaley ultimately hopes it will aid in the development of therapies to treat diseases as various as Alzheimer's, post-traumatic stress disorder, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, schizophrenia, autism, depression and multiple sclerosis.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-03-lab-brain-body-action.html
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