Brain Powered

A wave of recent advances shows how the mind affects health in ways we never imagined.

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Mice, Maps, and Major Milestones

It's been a very good year for the brain -- that three-pound wrinkled lump of gray matter that directs our movements, thoughts and memories, our loves, hopes and dreams. It's the organ that makes us who we are. It can also make us lose who we are, through degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, which affects almost half of those who live past 85. And now we know it has far more to do with our overall health than we ever imagined.

A recent wave of breakthrough technologies has yielded unprecedented insight into how our brains work, and a better grasp of how they go wrong. That, in turn, has led to new targeted treatments designed to fix malfunctions. Science is also revealing the surprising power of the mind, when used correctly, to heal the body. Here are some of the mind-boggling findings.

Mapping the Brain
September 2006 marked a major milestone for our noggins, with completion of the Allen Brain Atlas, the first gene map of the brain. It all started in 2002, when billionaire philanthropist Paul Allen, cofounder of Microsoft, gathered some of the world's top scientists and charged them with finding an innovative new way to accelerate our understanding of the brain. From that he committed $100 million and established the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle.

Using custom-built robotics and software, 60 full-time researchers tested 250,000 preserved slices of mouse brain, which resembles the human one enough that most discoveries would also hold true for us. They generated a volume of raw data that revealed where in the brain each of the mouse's 21,000 genes was activated. (Different types of brain cells activate different sets of genes, producing a unique roster of proteins that enables each cell to do its job -- storing memory, directing movement or some other task.)

The map revealed that about 80 percent of the body's genes are turned on in the brain -- more than anyone had expected. That means if pharma companies are not careful, drugs targeted to other organs could have unwanted side effects in the brain. The map also uncovered evidence that could help reveal what goes wrong in complicated brain disorders such as schizophrenia and autism.

The result is a 3-D virtual mouse brain atlas (brain-map.org) that does for neuroscientists what a survey map pinpointing gold deposits does for miners: It lets them hightail it to where the action is and start digging, says David Anderson, PhD, a professor of biology at California Institute of Technology and a project advisor.

Targeted gene therapies could help patients with brain diseases that drugs alone cannot heal. Such therapies deliver healthy genes to parts of the body where faulty ones are wreaking havoc. In the past, gene therapies turned out to be more dangerous than scientists had expected, and the death of an Arizona teenager in a 1999 clinical trial set the field back years. But a new method of gene delivery to the brain, via a harmless virus called adeno-associated virus (AAV), has proved safe in early human trials.

One AAV therapy may ease advanced Parkinson's disease by repairing an overactive brain circuit that causes typical symptoms of slowness and rigidity. That circuit acts like a brick on a car brake, interfering with the patient's ability to move. Brain surgeons currently remove that brick by implanting a pacemaker-like device that overrides this circuit. But the treatment, called deep brain stimulation, requires three months of weekly visits to a specialized neurosurgery facility, which is tough when you live hundreds of miles away, says neurosurgeon Michael Kaplitt, MD, of Weill Cornell Medical College.

Dr. Kaplitt's AAV therapy removes the brick from the brake by delivering a neurochemical called GABA into brain cells. In a safety trial that ended in 2006, the gene therapy proved safe. At the highest levels, it helped patients as much as deep brain stimulation. If this proves effective in a larger trial, someday an advanced Parkinson's patient could have brain surgery, get a gene implanted in precisely the right spot and go home a couple of days later. "Our hope is to bring this type of therapy to a much larger audience of patients in need," Dr. Kaplitt says.

Since his trial, other AAV gene therapies have been used in six early trials: three for Parkinson's, two for lethal pediatric brain disorders and one for Alzheimer's. If they continue to prove safe and show positive results, we'll be able to treat some of the most devastating brain disorders.

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Heavy snow had buried my van in our driveway. My husband, Scott, dug around the wheels, rocked the van back and forth and finally pushed me free. I was on the road when I heard an odd noise. I got on my cell and called home. "Thank God you answered," I said when Scott picked up. "There's this alarming sound coming under the van. For a moment I thought I was dragging you down the highway."

"And you didn't stop?"

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