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
NEW After hearing thousands of last words, this hospital chaplain has advice for the living
Hospital chaplain J.S. Park opens up about death, grief and hearing thousands of last words, and shares his advice for the living.
BREAKING Police cordon off Iran consulate in Paris where man threatens to blow himself up: French media
French police cordoned off the Iranian consulate in Paris on Friday, where a man was threatening to blow himself up, Europe 1 radio and BFM TV.
Some Canadian families will receive up to $620 per child today
More money will land in the pockets of some Canadian families on Friday for the latest Canada Child Benefit installment.
BREAKING Iran fires at apparent Israeli attack drones near Isfahan air base and nuclear site
An apparent Israeli drone attack on Iran saw troops fire air defences at a major air base and a nuclear site early Friday morning near the central city of Isfahan, an assault coming in retaliation for Tehran's unprecedented drone-and-missile assault on the country.
American millionaire Jonathan Lehrer denied bail after being charged with killing Canadian couple
American millionaire Jonathan Lehrer, one of two men charged in the killings of a Canadian couple in Dominica, has been denied bail.
Ottawa to force banks to call carbon rebate a carbon rebate in direct deposits
Canadian banks that refuse to identify the carbon rebate by name when doing direct deposits are forcing the government to change the law to make them do it, says Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault.
Ontario woman loses $15,000 to fake Walmart job scam
A woman who recently moved to Canada from India was searching for a job when she got caught in an online job scam and lost $15,000.
After COVID, WHO defines disease spread 'through air'
The World Health Organization and around 500 experts have agreed for the first time on what it means for a disease to spread through the air, in a bid to avoid the confusion early in the COVID-19 pandemic that some scientists have said cost lives.
Prince Harry formally confirms he is now a U.S. resident
Prince Harry, the son of King Charles III and fifth in line to the British throne, has formally confirmed he is now a U.S. resident.