May 24 2024University of South Florida Through high-tech imaging and virtual reality, a University of South Florida medical engineering professor is creating a detailed map of the brain that can be used to better understand developmental disorders, such as autism, and provide earlier, more effective treatments for brain injuries and diseases.
Even though we're focusing on a specific part of the brain involved in hearing, the information we gather can help us understand serious developmental disorders that happen when the brain doesn't develop properly early on. Our findings could also pave the way for innovative strategies to repair and reconnect damaged neural circuits affected by disease and injuries later in life.
"Between the fourth and fifth gestational months, the number of neurons in the nervous system just explodes almost exponentially and synapses are forming at a rate of about a million per second during that time, which is an incredible number when you consider there are almost 100 trillion synapses in an adult human brain," he said. "I like to think of it as there are about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, and there are about that many neurons in the brain.
"At the cellular level, the physical manifestations of these disorders are caused by developmental defects in brain connectivity," Heller said. "From a clinical perspective, researching therapeutics for these disorders is difficult without a better understanding of how the brain develops under normal conditions, and results in treating symptoms rather than aiming for a global cure.
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