Western University-developed technique gives new insight on brain disorders
A new technique that flattens the wrinkles and folds in the brain's hippocampus for a 2D view could make it easier to understand brain disorders.
The hippocampus is a region of the brain often looked at for clues to understand disease progression and response to treatment for brain disorders.
“There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on in the hippocampus, it’s a real hotbed. So, there are many diseases associated with it, that start to show abnormalities there before most of the rest of the brain,” says former PhD student at Western University, Jordan DeKraker.
Some of those diseases include Alzheimer’s disease, major depressive disorder and epilepsy.
What the new technique does is use images from an MRI to digitally create a model of the hippocampus. Why that is important is because the tissue folds like a sheet, making it difficult to diagnose changes according to DeKraker.
“We’re basically doing is using a bunch of computational tools to try and unfold that structure so we can get a look at all different parts of that tissue.”
Assistant Professor at Western, Ali Khan, was one of the people overseeing DeKraker’s work
“By flattening it out, it makes it look very similar across people, so now you can find corresponding points in one person and another, so that gives us a way to compare.”
This is the culmination of DeKraker’s PhD work at Western. It has been published in the journal Trends in Neurosciences, and DeKraker believes this will open up a new level of understanding of certain brain disorders.
“We’d like to try and better diagnose and understand, perhaps, different sub-types of the disease so we can choose a treatment that’s most likely to work for that person.”
And more research and development will branch off from DeKraker’s work.
“We’re developing a web-based app that can be used to automatically perform this unfolding and to provide machine learning or artificial intelligence-based methods for quantifying how the hippocampus is actually affected in different individuals,” explains Khan.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Quebec nurse had to clean up after husband's death in Montreal hospital
On a night she should have been mourning, a nurse from Quebec's Laurentians region says she was forced to clean up her husband after he died at a hospital in Montreal.
Northern Ont. lawyer who abandoned clients in child protection cases disbarred
A North Bay, Ont., lawyer who abandoned 15 clients – many of them child protection cases – has lost his licence to practise law.
Bank of Canada officials split on when to start cutting interest rates
Members of the Bank of Canada's governing council were split on how long the central bank should wait before it starts cutting interest rates when they met earlier this month.
Maple Leafs fall to Bruins in Game 3, trail series 2-1
Brad Marchand scored twice, including the winner in the third period, and added an assist as the Boston Bruins downed the Toronto Maple Leafs 4-2 to take a 2-1 lead in their first-round playoff series Wednesday
Cuban government apologizes to Montreal-area family after delivering wrong body
Cuba's foreign affairs minister has apologized to a Montreal-area family after they were sent the wrong body following the death of a loved one.
'It was instant karma': Viral video captures failed theft attempt in Nanaimo, B.C.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
What is changing about Canada's capital gains tax and how does it impact me?
The federal government's proposed change to capital gains taxation is expected to increase taxes on investments and mainly affect wealthy Canadians and businesses. Here's what you need to know about the move.
New Indigenous loan guarantee program a 'really big deal,' Freeland says at Toronto conference
Canada's Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland was among the 1,700 delegates attending the two-day First Nations Major Projects Coalition (FNMPC) conference that concluded Tuesday in Toronto.
'Life was not fair to him': Daughter of N.B. man exonerated of murder remembers him as a kind soul
The daughter of a New Brunswick man recently exonerated from murder, is remembering her father as somebody who, despite a wrongful conviction, never became bitter or angry.