Scientists Brainstorm to Fathom the Brain's Storms

“Suddenly amid the sadness, spiritual darkness and depression, his brain seemed to catch fire . . . like lightning. These glimmerings were still but a premonition of that final second (never more than a second) with which the seizure itself began. That second was, of course, unbearable.”So wrote Fyodor Dostoevsky in his 1868 novel, The Idiot, describing the seizures suffered by his protagonist. Scientists still don’t know much about what causes these debilitating storms of unchecked electrical activity in the brain. Although many childhood neurological disorders involve seizures, “we don’t have a real handle, developmentally, on models to study them,” notes Gordon Fishell, PhD, professor of cell biology.But that could be changing. Dr. Fishell and his team have created one such childhood epilepsy model by disrupting the development of specific types of brain cells, called interneurons, in mice. Their findings could offer valuable insights for designing drugs to treat these disorders, which afflict some 123,000 children in the United States each year. “These cells restrict electrical activity in the brain, which, when unrestricted, causes seizures,” explains Dr. Fishell, whose work is funded, in part, by the Simons Foundation. “If we could develop drugs that stimulate those particular cells, we might be able to repress seizure activity.”Read more at...NYU News & Views, November/December 2009.