Popular Science recently published an article describing a novel approach to treating traumatic brain injuries with an 84% success rate of waking patients from a vegetative state. Neuroscientist Philip De Fina and colleagues at the International Brain Research Foundation (IBRF) use various neurological tests, such as Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and Electroencephalography (EEG), to identify “functional neuromarkers” following traumatic brain injury. These neuromarkers are structural and molecular cues that allow the doctors to assess the damage and devise a treatment program aimed toward promoting neural plasticity. While tissue damage and cell death cannot be reversed, De Fina and colleagues administer drugs to alter the concentration and efficacy of various neurotransmitters to prevent the death of synapses and to stimulate alternative routes of neural connectivity. In addition, electrical impulses are used to increase blood flow to the brain and patients are given a cocktail of vitamins and nutrients to promote optimal neural health.
Although De Fina’s innovative treatment method has proven effective, very little is known about the precise neurophysiological mechanisms that are responsible for its success. The US Department of Defense recently granted $6.4 million to IBRF, funding research that will elucidate and advance this treatment. In addition to its immediate clinical application, De Fina’s medical breakthrough could lead to a new, expanded understanding of the dynamic nature of neural development and function.
It seems unorthodox that a treatment would be clinically administered and deemed successful before anyone can actually explain how and why it works. However, this method has been incredibly successful, and even if its development was some sort of fluke, it could lead to major advancements in the treatment of various neurological damage and disorders.
Identifying molecular patterns within nervous tissue is a key method of understanding large-scale neurological function. It is extremely difficult to compare separate whole brain sections to one another at a large scale and comparison of protein labeling to gene expression is complicated in the nervous system, because it requires knowledge of where the processes of neurons are located and their connectivity. I have begun to use the Whole Brain Catalog (WBC) to overcome this interoperability problem in my current research on the newly discovered pannexin (Panx) family of gap junction-like proteins.
