Human brain imaging technology reveals mysterious brain: helps doctors treat mental illness

Scientists believe that the level of HDAC is related to the degree of genetic change. The brain region with the highest HDAC content is also the brain region where the genes are least likely to change. Therefore, high levels of HDAC can impede human learning, even in normal human brains, and new human brain imaging techniques will reveal how genes activate active human brains.

For the first time, scientists have used brain scanning techniques to reveal changes in the brain's activity, a finding that will help treat Alzheimer's syndrome, schizophrenia, and other diseases caused by brain disorders. This is not all, and further research will help researchers assess the efficacy of drugs on these diseases.

"Genetic or environmental"

Researchers from Harvard Medical School are focusing on a molecule that controls the tightness of DNA that wraps around a protein that determines the composition of a gene. Imagine DNA is like a coil, and these proteins are like an axis. The tightness of the coil winding axis will affect the gene expression of the DNA. These molecules, called histone deacetylases (HDACs), are molecules that determine the tightness of DNA-wound proteins, such as high levels of HDAC enzymes in the human memory of the brains of patients with Alzheimer's syndrome. .

To further observe how this HDAC enzyme works, the team led by Hsiao-YingWey and Tonya Gilbert, researchers at the Harvard Medical School's biomedical imaging Martinos Centre, have spent seven years developing the chemical mixture. . This chemical mixture, called 11cMartinosatat, bound to the HDAC enzyme, shows which parts of the human brain will have HDAC enzymes, and how large the amount is.

The research was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. In the study, researchers injected the chemical mixture into eight healthy individuals and used PET brain scanning to track the response. "This experiment demonstrates for the first time how the HDAC enzyme works in an active human brain," said Jacob Hooker, director of radiochemistry at Martino Center and co-author of the report.

A researcher at the Institute of Neurology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who is engaged in human brain imaging, told the reporter of the "First Financial Daily": "The idea of ​​using gene technology to judge gene expression has been around for ten years. The difference in this experiment is that it is on the one hand. On the other hand, PET imaging technology is used.” PET is considered to be the most advanced medical diagnostic technology at present. PET imaging system for small animals has been widely used in animal model research of diseases, new drug development and new treatment methods. Early research and early evaluation of efficacy, as well as basic biological research such as gene expression and cell tracking. Just last month, Yang Yongfeng, a researcher at the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, made a breakthrough in the high-resolution small animal PET prototype imaging system. But it is the first time PET has scanned humans to study gene expression.

The above researchers also questioned this experiment at Harvard Medical School: "The introduction of gene expression in the human body, just like genetic modification, is ethically appropriate to be confirmed. Because the input of foreign aid markers in the human body, if it does not affect Normal human metabolism is possible, and once it affects normal gene expression, or activates new gene expression, there is an ethic."

However, ethical concerns will not ultimately hinder the development of research. The results of the experiment have taken an important step toward the development of the booming epigenetics field. It also answers two eternal questions raised by human beings: "genetic or environmental?" (innate or acquired), that is, whether the changes in the human body are determined by genetic factors or environmental factors? Genetics give people the DNA's password, but the environment allows these DNA to be expressed differently. If you go back to the problem of DNA winding a protein like a thread, genetic epistemologists want to know how human diet and movement produce chemical changes in the human body by altering the tightness of DNA-wrapped proteins.

In the past, research in the field of human epigenetics was very scarce. This human brain imaging experiment provided at least some clues about how the environment and genes work together in the human body, so scientists are excited about the experimental results. A previous study showed that in the brains of schizophrenic patients, there were multiple link breaks between neurons. Today's study not only allows people to first observe epigenetic activity in active human brains, but this technology goes beyond previous mouse experiments and can be used for the diagnosis of diseases caused by brain disorders.

It is worth noting that in the experiment, the researchers also found that the morphology of this HDAC enzyme is more durable than expected, which also provides the possibility of further experiments for future human brain research.