Brainbows

[Masa]

Been reading about these things called Brainbows. I will not go into detail here but they are pictures that have been made by dyeing cells in the brain with “fancy protons” they can then produce these into pictures of how the brain is wired up and how it works
The pictures are like a kaleidoscope of colours and look uncannily like what SWIM sees when he trips
Check the link out then tell us what you think
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/mai...cibrain131.xml

Reputation Comments on this post:

	Nice find.
	interesting
	Brainbows...cool.

[Lunar Loops]

Nice find, but in future please try and post the whole article. Also not sure this is in the correct forum, but unsure where it should go (Some For All or The Euphoric Body perhaps?). Interesting. Anyway, here is the article from The Telegraph (UK):

Brainbows offer unique colour brain map

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor

Last Updated: 6:01pm GMT 31/10/2007


The workings of the most complex known object in the universe - the brain - have been revealed in glorious Technicolor for the first time by a remarkable technique that could give a new view of the effects of autism, schizophrenia and other mental disorders.

By combining genetic tricks and fancy proteins, scientists have labelled hundreds of thousands of individual brain cells with around 90 distinctive hues to create a riot of colour that they call a 'Brainbow'

Although the resulting images look like works of art that owe a debt to pointillism, fauvism, and abstract expressionism, they will provide profound new scientific insights into how the brain is wired up, at least in animals that can be genetically altered, and what goes wrong when connections are faulty because of disease or damage.

Prof Jeff Lictman of Harvard University, one of the team that unveils the method today in the journal Nature, says this method to paint brain cells with bright, fluorescent colours will reveal the miswirings in certain mental disorders.

These would include not only neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's, other kinds of dementia and "human BSE," but perhaps animal models of mental illnesses too, and autism spectrum disorders.
Brains, like computers, pass electrical signals between brain cells, or neurons, along 'wires' that are called dendrites and axons. The new method labels each nerve cell with its own unique mixture of blue, yellow, orange, and red fluorescent proteins to reveal the vast networks of connections.
"In the same way that a television monitor mixes red, green, and blue to depict a wide array of colours, the combination of three or more fluorescent proteins in individual neurons can generate many different hues," says Prof Lichtman.
"There are few tools neuroscientists can use to tease out the wiring diagram of the nervous system; Brainbow should help us much better map out the brain and nervous system's complex tangle of neurons."

The appearance of neurons was first revealed like "trees in a winter mist" using silver salts, a staining method discovered by chance at the end of the nineteenth century by the Milanese anatomist Camillio Golgi, who thought nerve cells were the "mysterious butterflies of the soul."
The work of Gogli was taken up by the Spanish Nobel laureate Santiago Ramón y Cajal to provide the first details of the anatomy of the brain, marking the birth of what is now called neuroscience. Today's work marks a remarkable extension of this pioneering research.
"We've already used Brainbow to take a first peek at the nervous system of mice, and we've observed some very interesting, and previously unrecognised, patterns of neuron arrangement," says co-author Prof Joshua Sanes. "As far as understanding what we're seeing, we've only just scratched the surface."


Here is a direct link to the audio slideshow of the 'brainbows':

http://link.brightcove.com/services/...ctid1281309836

[~lostgurl~]

Shroomonger please add the slideshow to the file archive.

Below is the picture from the article:
scibrain131.jpg
Area of the hippocampus from a transgenic mouse (top) and motor neuron axons (bottom)

[Lunar Loops]

Originally Posted by ~lostgurl~

Shroomonger please add the slideshow to the file archive.

OK, can add the link. Wasn't sure about doing this as have no idea how long the link will be valid for.

Done.

[Cakes]

in future please try and post the whole article

The only thing that the article said that wasn't included in the first post was the part about how they are going to fuck up a bunch of animals in this study. OMG i got so sick at the thought of those tortured insane little guys..who knows what evil thing they will be subjected to inside their minds..<<not the way to better society! and for science sake, how the hell would you ever KNOW about these sickness' since the source is obviously not going to be the same. who the hell cares how sick a mouse can be made by some scientist? it is the actual organic sickness that already exists in PEOPLE WHO CAN TALK that counts.

but the mice pix will look pretty, huh? and be called "brainbows" and that's just so sweet

OMG
i liked the original poster's version better.

[Lunar Loops]

Originally Posted by Cakes

OMG
i liked the original poster's version better.

Well, don't shoot the messenger. The link to the original message was in the first posting anyway, so you may as well have the whole article. Ignorance is not always bliss (and I should know).

Apologies if any upset was caused.

[Masa]

thanks for the support guys : )
great forum but the mods are a bit over zealos somtimes : )
tbh i dont give a toss about a few mice

Reputation Comments on this post:

totally love swims sig

[~lostgurl~]

A new entry has been added to Drugs Archive

Description:
Art and science collide as scientists map the brain in huge detail by labelling indivdual brain cells with 90 different colours. An audio slideshow with Telegraph Science Editor Roger Highfield.

To check it out, rate it or add comments, visit Brainbows
The comments you make there will appear in the posts below.

[Masa]

thanks gurl

[Miso Jace]

Very interesting article, the mind boggles

[Masa]

high-5 Miso nice to see another scot here

[Cakes]

Have you heard of "form constants"?

A form constant is one of several geometric patterns which are recurringly observed outside and in. I mean, we observe them in our minds and also we observe other people making them. They appear in our minds naturally and when we get sick, stimulated or drugged. These shapes occur in our alphabets, art and buildings. like the mulit-continental pyramids.

The term was first coined by a guy studying people taking mescaline; but now-a-days, the guys who are doing the most work on it are the guys studying petroglyphs.


Form constants have been mapped extensively in the last century, principally by Klüver who defined four main types of constantly occurring visions as grating, filigree, cobwebs, tunnels and spirals (9) and by Max Knoll in the Fifties, who tested more than a thousand persons, provoking visions with electricity and identifying 15 categories of form constants as spirals, concentric circles, wave lines, grids, prisms, a repetition of points, stripes, triangles, organic outlines (10).
In the Seventies Americans Siegal, Jarvik and Oster conducted extensive research on drug-induced phosphenes and hallucinations. Oster pointed out that phosphenes are induced by a wide variety of chemical agents as for instance alcohol: a person with delirium tremens may see a field of bright, moving specks that he may interpret as insects crawling on a wall (11). Siegal concluded that the experiments pointed to underlying mechanisms in the central nervous system as the source of a universal phenomenology of hallucinations (12). He also listed thirteen conditions in which these form constants have been reported, such as falling asleep and waking up, the delirium of fever, drug intoxication (13).
Little research has been done on these phenomena since the early seventies, when federal laws imposed constraints that virtually eliminated experimental work with hallucinogens in man (14).
In 1988 J.D. Lewis-Williams and T.A. Dowson published "The Signs of All Times", asserting that Paleolithic rock art was inspired by trance states, basing their thesis on entoptic research (15).
Many academicians debated this thesis, underscoring that entoptic phenomena may be provoked by several factors apart from trances, but there appears to have been little dispute as to the fact that this art was inspired by an entoptic imagery. One of the strongest arguments against the thesis of Lewis-Williams and Dowson is that Australian aborigines, whose art is widely recognized as entoptic (16), have no tradition of either shamanism, trance or drugs. Aborigines say their designs come from the Dreaming, conceived as a continuum of past, present and future all together, the domain of Dreamings who are ancestral beings who passed on their spirits to living generations of humans. Thurston, after analyzing entoptic phenomena and indigenous imageries from all over the world, concludes that "this sort of imagery is indeed something that is common to humans in our biology, and in that regard our Paleolithic ancestors are us. Entoptic imagery in art, associated with trace states in their broadest interpretation including dream states, is a pan-human phenomenon" (17).


(9) Klüver, H. 1926. Mescal Visions and Eidetic Vision. American Journal of Psychology 37:502-15. Klüver ha coniato il termine "forma ricorrente" per poterne discutere, e lo ha poi categorizzato in quattro tipi di base: 1) reticoli, tralicci, lavoro a traforo, filigrana, alveare, scacchiere, 2) ragnatele, 3) gallerie, imbuti, vicoli, coni o contenitori e 4) la spirale.
(10) E’ reperibile in rete un’eccellente panoramica della ricerca sui fenomeni entoptici di Suzanne Carr , in http://www.oubliette.zetnet.co.uk/three.html. A pagina 3 si trova una illustrazione delle forme ricorrenti identificate da Knoll, (da Oster, G. 1970. Phosphenes. Scientific American:222(2):83-87).
(11) "I fosfeni possono anche essere provocati da numerosi agenti chimici. L’alcool è uno di questi: una persona con il delirium tremens può vedere un campo di punti luminosi in movimento che potrà interpretare come insetti che brulicano su un muro. Tossine come quelle associate alla scarlattina possono provocare fosfeni analoghi. Le droghe allucinogene quali la mescalina, psilicibina e LSD provocano spesso fosfeni che rappresentano forme astratte. Infatti, i fosfeni paiono giocare un ruolo importante nelle intossicazioni psichedeliche". Oster, G. 1970. Phosphenes. Scientific American:222(2):83-87.
(12) In seguito a ricerche effettuate presso l’Istituto Neuropsichiatrico dell’Università di California Siegal concluse che "gli esperimenti indicano meccanismi sottostanti al sistema nervoso centrale come fonte di una fenomenologia universale delle allucinazioni". Siegal, R.K. 1977. Hallucinations. Scientific American 237:132-40.
(13) Dormiveglia, ipoglicemia da insulina, epilessia, sifilide in stato avanzato, fotostimolazione, fissazione di cristalli, intossicazione da droghe, vertigini, delirio da febbre, episodi psicotici, mancanza di percezioni sensorie, stimolazione elettrica, emicrania. (Siegal, R.K. 1977. Hallucinations. Scientific American 237:132-40).
(14) Hollister, Leo E. "Effects of Hallucinogens in Humans." Hallucinogens: Neurochemical, Behavioral, and Clinical Perspectives. Ed. Barry L. Jacobs. New York: Raven Press, 1984.
(15) Entoptic Imagery in People and Their Art, Linda Thurston, 1991 (http://home.comcast.net/~markk2000/thurston/thesis.html) Hanno anche formulato sette principi di percezione: replicazione, frammentazione, integrazione, sovrapposizione, giustapposizione, riduplicazione, rotazione, e definito tre fasi essenziali che procedono da fenomeni entoptici ad una elaborazione di forme entoptiche in forme iconiche, come ‘illusione’ di una forma ambigua rotonda in una forma organica, e un’ allucinazione più complessa con immagini iconiche.
(16) Bednarik, Robert G. Commentary. "The Signs of All Times." By Lewis-Williams and Dowson. Current Anthropology. 4 (1988): 218-219: "...tra le centinaia di migliaia di petroglifi che possono essere ragionevolmente attribuiti al Pleistocene non è noto nemmeno uno singolo elemento di disegno che non sia una forma entoptica".
(17) Entoptic Imagery in People and Their Art, Linda Thurston, 1991.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Very informative.

[Cakes]

form-constant-mental-pattern.jpg
the individual forms, which can be united in different groups, are capable of a multiplicity of configurations. For an unbeknownst gazer on these forms, it is highly characteristic that the forms present endless successions in which the same contrivances, little animals or plant forms suddenly surface in front of the person.
suggesting that hallucinations are 'real' perceptions of ... the very mathematical processes operating within the brain/mind that produce the ordered 'visual-construct-mental-TV-reality' we normally experience as 'sight, and that psychedelics are the ideal and most direct way to study ... neurophysiology ... and the interrelationship of sight and the 'mind's eye'.

discrete psychedelic states representing increasing levels of iterative fractal-feedback within the brain/mind system and ... acceleratedfeedback (to the) chaos environment.
and depict, so to speak, barely formeds sketches of a primitive perception.

[Miso Jace]

Originally Posted by Masa

high-5 Miso nice to see another scot here

Likewise!

[Masa]

this has really opend my eyes
i allways thought it was about getting off your tits for a few hours
not sure if it makes me want to take more or less : )

[Metomni]

What a wealth of amazing knowledge!

SWIM gives out many thanks.