A surveillance system for neurons

Idea: Develop a surveillance system for neurons in the cerebral cortex. When the brain makes any decision -- say, I'm going to eat a pickle -- neurons talk to each other. These dynamic interactions are called "brain computations." A surveillance system could pinpoint which neurons talk to each other and what they say, how it computes.

Idea person: Andreas S. Tolias an associate professor of neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine.

Where the idea came from: Tolias grew up in the Republic of Cyprus. No one in his family is a scientist: His mother was a homemaker, and his father worked in civil aviation. But from the time Tolias was young, he loved puzzles.

Tolias thinks of physics as an area where the biggest things have already happened. He sees brain science as an area where great discoveries still lie ahead. The workings of the brain present him with the hardest puzzles of all.

How the idea grew: Tolias left his home to attend Cambridge University in England. He received his Ph.D from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston and then did his post-doctoral work at the Max Planck Institute in Tuebingen, Germany. He's been at Baylor since 2007.

In 2013, President Obama announced the BRAIN Initiative — a research effort to revolutionize our understanding of the human mind and uncover new ways to treat, prevent, and cure brain disorders such as Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, autism, epilepsy, and traumatic brain injury. Tolias, like neuroscientists around the country, responded to the challenge.

Tolias' puzzles: Our brains do a lot of stuff without our being aware of it. Tolias wants to figure out how those computations are accomplished -- both the ones that we are aware of and the ones we're not? "The essence of the problem lies in understanding how the billions of neurons communicate through trillions of connections and coordinate their activities to give rise to our mental faculties," he says.

Rather than trying to figure out the puzzle neuron by neuron, Tolias and his group are looking for the principles and rules that govern interactions between neurons.

This is a crude example, says Tolias. But pretend the cerebral cortex is the state of Texas. We know that the people who inhabit villages, towns, and cities have different types of jobs (farmers, doctors, teachers etc). But we do not know how all these people coordinate to produce stuff. How do they interact with each other to raise cotton, build computers, treat patients, and accomplish all the wonderful things human do? We don't know the governance structure.

We do know that different parts of the brain and different neurons specialize to perform different tasks. For instance, certain neurons are involved when we see a face or move our hands. But we do not know how those neurons work together to achieve these tasks or which neurons are talking with each other.

Right now, scientists have equipment that allows them to record interactions among dozens or hundreds of neurons. But to understand what is going on, Tolias and his colleagues want to develop "surveillance" equipment that allows them to watch and listen to tens of thousands of neurons -- and eventually, equipment that allows them to manipulate the neurons' interactions. With that equipment, Tolias hopes to crack the brain's "Morse code."

Next steps: Once the organization of the cerebral cortex is clear, Tolias and scientists around the country can understand diseases like Alzheimer's, where the brain's organization has fallen apart.

The bottom line: Tolias and his team are looking for the organizational principles that govern the neurons that enable us to perceive, move and think about the world around us.

Bookmark Gray Matters. Your neurons will erupt in "brain computations."