BigBrain - What Does It Mean?

From James Beck, Ph.D., Vice President of Scientific Affairs

This blog is part two in a series of three about the BigBrain.

Several weeks ago saw the announcement of a description of a new and highly detailed atlas of the brain, called BigBrain.  PDF wrote about how one person, making the decision to donate their brain, has made a significant contribution to science.  Indeed, that is true.  But what does this really mean for the future of neuroscience … and Parkinson’s research?

1. BigBrain is like the Google Earth of the brain, allowing researchers to not only see the big picture of brain anatomy but also allowing them to zoom in with incredible resolution to practically see individual cells.
2. Although BigBrain is like Google Earth, it currently does not have any labels.  That is, if you do not already know what you are looking at, BigBrain will not be able to help you.  (Is that New York City or Jersey City that I see?) Not all scientists are experts in neuroanatomy and so not everyone looking at BigBrain can delineate every brain structure.  Besides, annotating BigBrain will only need to happen once.  As this is done over time, researchers of all stripes will be able to ask interesting questions.
3. BigBrain is helpful, but it's just that: one person’s brain … Just like the first genome sequenced in the Human Genome Project was just one person’s DNA.  Half the battle here has been establishing the procedures to actually create a BigBrain.  As more courageous individuals donate their tissue, scientists will be able to generate more BigBrains in order to capture all the individual variation that is in each of our heads.

In sum, BigBrain is what they call “enabling technology.”  On its own it does not do much, but when combined with other technologies it is a powerful tool that can move science forward.  Thinking what the personal computer or the Internet have done recently, it will be exciting to see how this will change neuroscience.

(A view from the BigBrain atlas. The substantia nigra, where dopamine neurons are lost in PD, are the dark bands located below the two dark circles in the center.)

Going 3D: The BigBrain Is A Gift That Keeps on Giving

This blog is part one in a series of three about the BigBrain.

Do you remember the moment of putting on 3D glasses in a movie theater? There was awe and excitement as stories and images that were flat came to life. There was similar excitement yesterday when researchers reported in Science that they have created BigBrain, a high resolution 3D digital image of the brain.

To understand the excitement, it’s important to understand that like a 3D movie, this image isn’t simply a flat picture of the brain. It is incredibly in-depth. Have you ever had an MRI? Well this is hundreds of thousands times more detailed.  Some have compared BigBrain to Google Earth, which shows much of the globe, piece by piece. Scientists think this up-close-and-personal view will help us understand how the brain works.

But perhaps the most amazing part of the BigBrain story, is the one of how it came to be. BigBrain was reconstructed from a real donated brain, from a 65-year old woman who had passed away. She gave her brain to science, and now we may all benefit for years to come.

For it’s true that the brain truly is the final frontier. Did you know that even with BigBrain, brain donation remains an urgent need for understanding PD?

We can study other organs while a person is alive, but we cannot easily access and view a brain. The only way to study to do so to date has been to study brains donated to science. Brain donations enable scientists to learn more, for example by comparing a person’s medical records and PD symptoms, to their brain tissue after death.

That said, brain donation often brings up many questions and concerns for people with PD and their families. A few years ago, PDF Research Advocate Diana Barnwell wrote a beautiful story, "My Last Gift", about her decision to donate her brain to research, which may provide food for thought.

What’s your view of brain donation, and of this gift that made BigBrain possible?

At PDF, we always say that we can’t do our part without you. And in looking at BigBrain as an example, it’s true. In fact, this brain is only the first to be mapped. Scientists report planning to map other donor brains, including a male brain and others whose donors lived with certain diseases or conditions.

This emphasizes that it's your participation in research – including via brain donation – that brings us closer to solving Parkinson’s. So we say thank you to the anonymous donor that made BigBrain possible, and thank you to you.

Learn about brain donation by reading Diana's story, "My Last Gift," here, or by browsing PDF's list of US brain banks here.

Parkinson’s and the President: How Does the $100 Million BRAIN Initiative Announcement Impact our Community?

Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), introduced him as the "Scientist in Chief."  And he introduced himself as "the kid who had trouble with high-school physics."  But there was no mistaking the passion for his subject of the man who stood in front of us in the East Room of the White House this morning, announcing a major federal initiative in brain science.

It was President Obama at his rhetorical best, mixing easy banter with a deeply serious expression of his commitment to the brain research initiative that he described as the "next great American project."

When he described the pathos of someone watching "a beloved family member slip behind the mask of Parkinson's disease," you could practically feel a shudder of recognition among the normally restrained scientists, government officials and advocacy group leaders like myself who packed the room.  Perhaps "Empathizer in Chief" is more to the point; the guy really seems to mean it.

So what does this mean for Parkinson's?  We won't know for sure at least until the President delivers his budget message to Congress next Wednesday, and possibly not even then.  But the overall strategy of the BRAIN Initiative is clear: to use the resources of the federal government and private sectors to find out more than we know now about how the brain works – specifically, how the various parts connect with one another, and in what patterns.

All of this could have exciting implications for finding the solution to Parkinson's disease.

As Dr. Eric Kandel, the Columbia University scientist who won the Nobel Prize for his work on memory, said to me at a reception following the event, "this is an historic moment!"

We'll see.  There are several big questions to be answered, beginning with money:

• The President is calling for initial spending of $100 million in the year that begins October 1, 2013, but it is far from clear how much of this will be new money and how much will be existing funds repackaged for the new initiative.
• Then there's the matter of who spends it and how between the NIH, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation.  And there will be others.
• Lastly, how will patient advocates be involved? PDF certainly supports this initiative’s collaborative nature, utilizing federal research agencies and private scientific organizations.  We urge the President to expand this commitment to include patient advocates as we have done through the Parkinson’s Advocates in Research program.  After all, the people affected each day by Parkinson's disease are critical to our goals of finding better treatments at a faster pace.

But the overall picture is encouraging -- even exciting. This the first time that the President, after years of slogging through the thickets of the nation's fiscal crisis looking for an exit, has made a major statement about medical research, comparing the challenge -- and the potential for its success -- with the moon shot of the 1960s, the development of the computer chip in the 1970s, and the exploration of the human genome of the 1990s.

The common thread through all of these triumphs was what he described as the American "genius for innovation," an outgrowth of a national character of "dreamers and risk-takers."

"How can we afford to do this?" he asked.  Then he answered himself: "How can we afford not to?"

To learn more see PDF's official statement on our website here.

Remembering Arlen Specter

When I learned of the death of former Senator Arlen Specter two weeks ago, I thought immediately of two people in the Parkinson’s community who I knew would strike just the right chord to pull me out of a mood of regret for the loss of a true champion of medical research in America.

I got it right.

One was of these was Jim Cordy  – a veteran of the 1990’s “Washington Wars” to get Parkinson’s disease recognized – and funded -- as a national priority.  He was a close colleague of Joan Samuelson (read on), the founder of the Parkinson’s Action Network.  And he was best known (in addition to the frogs he raised, and that his wife Deborah tolerated, in their suburban Pittsburgh home) for the hour-glass that he carried everywhere, setting it on the desk or podium before him to symbolize what the passage of time means for someone who lives with Parkinson’s disease.   In Parkinson’s, he would say, every moment counts; every hour drains energy from a productive life; every year is another finger of reproach wagged at those of us who use other, more prosaic, measures of time, like annual budgets or fundraising plans.    

During our telephone conversation, Jim reminded me of the hour glass, and said he remembered how Arlen, then Senator Specter (R, PA) , ranking member of the Subcommittee on Health and Human Services, went to floor of the Senate during the debate on the federal support for research involving embryonic stem cells, referring repeatedly to “Jim Cordy’s hour glass, reminding us that time, for someone with Parkinson’s, is not neutral!”

My other witness was Joan Samuelson, the gifted and charismatic California lawyer who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in her forties; went to Washington during the administration of the first President Bush to fight for federal support of research involving the cells of discarded fetuses; then, in the mid-1990s, founded the Parkinson’s Action Network which now, under the leadership of the Amy Rick, serves as the PD community’s nerve center and power source on public policy issues.

Joan remembers Senator Specter’s unremitting commitment to medical research, the Republican counterpart to the equally indefatigable Tom Harkin (R, IA), his partner on the HHS subcommittee.  Together, they spearheaded the memorable drive to double the NIH budget between 1998 and 2003 – a spectacular achievement  that transformed the capacity of the United States to lead the world’s medical research and pave the way to new cures.  (She also reminded me, with admiration, of Senator Specter’s final legislative battle, in which he almost single-handedly persuaded Congress to add $10 billion to the NIH research budget as part of the stimulus program that President Obama put forward as a means to shake the country out of the 2009 financial crisis.)

As for me, I best remember Arlen Specter – dubbed by his fellow-Pennsylvanian Jim Cordy as the leader of “Arlen’s Army,” a play on the nickname (“Arnie’s Army”) of that other famous Pennsylvanian, the golfer Arnold Palmer – at the memorable Congressional hearing in the Fall of 1999, when the Senator and his friend Tom Harkin presided over a public hearing of the subcommittee on the subject of Parkinson’s disease research.  The hearing featured Dr. Gerald Fischbach, the head of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; Jim Cordy (armed with his hour-glass, of course!); Joan Samuelson; and the star, recently “out” with his PD diagnosis, a winsome, charming, young Canadian-born actor of the name Michael J. Fox.

PDF helped pull this event together and I was never more proud than when I saw this titanic cast playing out the Parkinson’s case before a national audience.  It wouldn’t have happened without Arlen Specter, and the PD community has never been the same since.

Goodbye, Arlen.  You did us proud.