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Having obtained an artificial smell, it 'dialogues' with the brain

2020-06-20T23:10:29.179Z


New route to repair damage (ANSA)An electrical signal produced in the laboratory and sent to the brain has been perceived as an odor: for the first time an experiment has 'spoken' the same language as the most complex of organs and opens the way to the possibility of restoring sensory perceptions, such as smell which is lost in many people affected by the new coronavirus, and in the future to repair brain damage. Published in the...


An electrical signal produced in the laboratory and sent to the brain has been perceived as an odor: for the first time an experiment has 'spoken' the same language as the most complex of organs and opens the way to the possibility of restoring sensory perceptions, such as smell which is lost in many people affected by the new coronavirus, and in the future to repair brain damage. Published in the journal Science and conducted on mice between New York University and the Italian Institute of Technology (Iit), the experiment opens up the development of nerve prostheses to restore the functioning of damaged parts of the brain.


Neurons (source: Marco Brondi / IIT)

Until now, the mechanisms that the brain uses to process olfactory information by listening to nerve cells have only been hypothesized and it is the first time that it has been possible to "speak" directly to the brain, receiving concrete feedback .

The artificial smell, expressed in electrical signals without there being a real source to produce it, has been transmitted directly to the nerve cells of the olfactory bulb, one of the areas of the brain where the sense of smell is processed.


Neurons (source: Riccardo Beltramo / IIT)

Coordinated by Edmund Chong of New York University, the research was conducted within the framework of the Brain Initiative promoted by the National Institutes of Health (Nih) of the United States to develop new technologies to understand the mechanisms of functioning of brain circuits. The result, according to the authors of the research, can be considered a "Rosetta stone" to understand the language of the nervous system as regards the smell and its perception.

The mathematical models that allowed the production of the electrical signal corresponding to the smell were developed by the IIT Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Center in Rovereto coordinated by Stefano Panzeri, head of the Neural Computation laboratory. The signal was then transmitted to the brain using optogenetics, that is the technique that through light pulses allows to turn on or off the neurons responsible for the analysis of sensory information.

Neurons activated thanks to the technique of optogenetics (source: Riccardo Beltramo / IIT)

"So far they have been used to communicate with the nerve cells only portions of the alphabet of their language separately", observed Monica Moroni, of IIT and among the authors main aspects of the study. "Now we have shown how we can combine the different letters, which for us are the activation of different groups of neurons, to compose articulated 'sentences' over time and providing a message directly to neurons with an unprecedented articulation".

It thus becomes possible to dialogue with the brain to understand its malfunctions, even if it will still be necessary to further refine the range of "words" of this new language to communicate in increasingly effective ways. In the longer term, the results of the study pave the way for the repair of damaged sense organs through artificial interfaces and nerve prostheses that will be able to communicate effectively with the brain.

Source: ansa

All tech articles on 2020-06-20

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