Scientists Use Tiny Camera to Study Treatment For Parkinson’s

By Tim McGuinness Ph.D. on February 6th, 2008

Scientists in Japan have developed a method that will allow them to delve deeper into brains. While they hope that the new process will eventually become applicable to humans, they’ll start off somewhere lower down the food chain.

Nara Institute of Science and Technology in western Japan has implanted a tiny camera in a mouse’s brain for memory study. In order to see how memory is formed, scientists at Nara Institute of Science and Technology have implanted a small semiconductor camera inside the hippocampus of a mouse’s brain. In the future, scientists hope to apply this new technology to humans to treat illnesses. The camera is 3 mm (0.1 inch) long, 2.3 mm wide and 2.4 mm in depth. The researchers injected the mouse with a substance that lights up whenever there is brain activity. The camera then captures that light and the visuals come up on a screen.

Researchers hope that the method will shed some light on how to treat Parkinson’s disease, “a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that often impairs the sufferer’s motor skills and speech.” It actually involves placing an implant in the brain, so saying that it’s a serious operation is an understatement. The risk is going to be worth the effort, should the experiment prove successful. A study on the functions of brain activity with emphasis on memory is going to have life-saving applications.

Hopefully the experiment will yield favorable results. Though, cameras this small may open up a host of other applications as well, from vision restoration, to spy vs. spy!

Contributor: J.P. Lolin, TigerDirect Correspondent!

Source: FarEstGizmos

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