Carl Schoonover: How to look inside the brain

Prevoditelj: Suzana Baric Recezent: SIBELA KESAC

This is a thousand-year-old drawing of the brain.

Ovo je crtež mozga star tisuću godina.

It's a diagram of the visual system.

To je graf optičkog sustava.

And some things look very familiar today.

A neke stvari danas izgledaju veoma poznato.

Two eyes at the bottom, optic nerve flowing out from the back.

Dva oka na dnu, optički živac proizlazi iz pozadine.

There's a very large nose

Tu je jako velik nos

that doesn't seem to be connected to anything in particular.

koji, čini se, nije povezan s ničim posebnim.

And if we compare this

Ako to usporedimo

to more recent representations of the visual system,

sa suvremenijim prikazima optičkog sustava,

you'll see that things have gotten substantially more complicated

vidjet ćete da su se stvari jako zakomplicirale

over the intervening thousand years.

kroz proteklih tisuću godina.

And that's because today we can see what's inside of the brain,

A to je zato što danas možemo vidjeti što je unutar mozga,

rather than just looking at its overall shape.

a ne samo gledati njegov cjelokupni oblik.

Imagine you wanted to understand how a computer works

Zamislite da želite razumjeti kako kompjuter radi,

and all you could see was a keyboard, a mouse, a screen.

a možete vidjeti samo tipkovnicu, miša i ekran.

You really would be kind of out of luck.

Zbilja ne biste imali sreće.

You want to be able to open it up, crack it open,

Želite moći otvoriti ga, rastvoriti ga,

look at the wiring inside.

razgledati ožičenje unutra.

And up until a little more than a century ago,

I sve do prije malo više od sto godina,

nobody was able to do that with the brain.

nitko to nije mogao učiniti s mozgom.

Nobody had had a glimpse of the brain's wiring.

Nitko nije ni povirio u ožičenje mozga.

And that's because if you take a brain out of the skull

I zato, ako izvadite mozak iz lubanje

and you cut a thin slice of it,

i odrežete tanak režanj,

put it under even a very powerful microscope,

stavite ga čak i pod veoma snažan mikroskop,

there's nothing there.

ondje nema ničega.

It's gray, formless.

Siv je, bez oblika.

There's no structure. It won't tell you anything.

Nema strukture. Neće vam ništa reći.

And this all changed in the late 19th century.

A to se sve promijenilo krajem 19. stoljeća.

Suddenly, new chemical stains for brain tissue were developed

Odjednom, razvijene su nove kemijske mrlje za tkivo mozga

and they gave us our first glimpses at brain wiring.

i dale su nam prve poglede na ožičenje mozga.

The computer was cracked open.

Kompjuter je rastvoren.

So what really launched modern neuroscience

Ono što je zbilja pokrenulo modernu neuroznanost

was a stain called the Golgi stain.

je bila mrlja nazvana "Golgijeva mrlja".

And it works in a very particular way.

A radi na jedan poseban način.

Instead of staining all of the cells inside of a tissue,

Umjesto da umrlja sve stanice unutar tkiva,

it somehow only stains about one percent of them.

ona nekako umrlja samo oko 1% njih.

It clears the forest, reveals the trees inside.

Ona rasčišćava šumu, otkriva stabla unutar nje.

If everything had been labeled, nothing would have been visible.

Ako je sve već označeno, ništa se ne bi vidjelo.

So somehow it shows what's there.

Ali nekako pokazuje što je ondje.

Spanish neuroanatomist Santiago Ramon y Cajal,

Španjolski neuroanatomist, Santiago Ramon y Cajal,

who's widely considered the father of modern neuroscience,

koji se smatra ocem moderne neuroznanosti,

applied this Golgi stain, which yields data which looks like this,

primjenio je tu Golgijevu mrlju, koja donosi podatke koji ovako izgledaju,

and really gave us the modern notion of the nerve cell, the neuron.

i zbilja nam dao moderan pojam živčane stanice, neurona.

And if you're thinking of the brain as a computer,

A ako razmišljate o mozgu kao o kompjuteru,

this is the transistor.

ovo je tranzistor.

And very quickly Cajal realized

I Cajal je ubrzo shvatio

that neurons don't operate alone,

da neuroni ne rade sami,

but rather make connections with others

već stvaraju veze s drugima

that form circuits just like in a computer.

i tvore krugove baš kao kod kompjutera.

Today, a century later, when researchers want to visualize neurons,

Danas, sto godina kasnije, kada znanstvenici žele vizualizirati neurone,

they light them up from the inside rather than darkening them.

posvijetle ih iznutra, umjesto da ih potamne.

And there's several ways of doing this.

A postoji nekoliko načina na koje se to napravi.

But one of the most popular ones

Ali jedan od najpopularnijih

involves green fluorescent protein.

uključuje zeleni fluorescentni protein.

Now green fluorescent protein,

Zeleni fluorescentni protein,

which oddly enough comes from a bioluminescent jellyfish,

čudno je to ¸što dolazi od bioluminiscentne meduze,

is very useful.

veoma je koristan.

Because if you can get the gene for green fluorescent protein

Ako možete dobiti gen za zeleni fluorescentni protein

and deliver it to a cell,

i dopremiti ga do stanice,

that cell will glow green --

ta stanica će svijetliti zeleno -

or any of the many variants now of green fluorescent protein,

ili bilo koju drugu od mnogih varijacija zelenog fluorescentnog proteina,

you get a cell to glow many different colors.

možete dobiti stanicu koja svijetli u mnogo različitih boja.

And so coming back to the brain,

Vratimo se na mozak.

this is from a genetically engineered mouse called "Brainbow."

Ovo je iz genetički stvorenog miša nazvanog "Moždana duga".

And it's so called, of course,

A tako se, naravno, zove

because all of these neurons are glowing different colors.

zato što svi ovi neuroni svijetle u različitim bojama.

Now sometimes neuroscientists need to identify

Ponekad neuroznanstvenici moraju identificirati

individual molecular components of neurons, molecules,

pojedinačne molekularne sastavnice neurona, molekule,

rather than the entire cell.

a ne cijele stanice.

And there's several ways of doing this,

To se može napraviti na nekoliko načina,

but one of the most popular ones

ali jedan od najpopularnijih

involves using antibodies.

uključuje korištenje antitijela.

And you're familiar, of course,

A vi ste, naravno, upoznati

with antibodies as the henchmen of the immune system.

s antitijelima kao štitonošama imunosnog sustava.

But it turns out that they're so useful to the immune system

Ali ispada da su tako korisna imunosnom sustavu

because they can recognize specific molecules,

zato što mogu prepoznati određene molekule,

like, for example, the coat protein

kao, na primjer, protein s kodom

of a virus that's invading the body.

virusa koji napada tijelo.

And researchers have used this fact

I znanstvenici su iskoristili tu činjenicu

in order to recognize specific molecules inside of the brain,

kako bi prepoznali određene molekule unutar mozga,

recognize specific substructures of the cell

prepoznali određene podstrukture stanice

and identify them individually.

i pojedinačno ih identificirali.

And a lot of the images I've been showing you here are very beautiful,

I mnoge od slika koje sam vam ovdje pokazao su jako lijepe,

but they're also very powerful.

ali isto tako su i vrlo snažne.

They have great explanatory power.

Imaju veliku snagu objašnjenja.

This, for example, is an antibody staining

Ovo je, na primjer, mrlja na antitijelima

against serotonin transporters in a slice of mouse brain.

nasuprot prenosiocima serotonina u režnju miševog mozga.

And you've heard of serotonin, of course,

A čuli ste za serotonin, naravno,

in the context of diseases like depression and anxiety.

u kontekstu bolesti kao što su depresija i tjeskoba.

You've heard of SSRIs,

Čuli ste za SSRI lijekove,

which are drugs that are used to treat these diseases.

koji se koriste za liječenje tih bolesti.

And in order to understand how serotonin works,

A kako bismo razumjeli kako serotonin djeluje,

it's critical to understand where the serontonin machinery is.

neophodno je razumjeti gdje se nalazi mehanizacija serotonina.

And antibody stainings like this one

Mrlje na antitijelima poput ove

can be used to understand that sort of question.

mogu se koristiti kako bi se razumjela ovakva pitanja.

I'd like to leave you with the following thought:

Želio bih završiti sa sljedećom misli:

Green fluorescent protein and antibodies

Zeleni fluorescentni protein i antitijela

are both totally natural products at the get-go.

oboje su od samoga početka posve prirodni proizvodi.

They were evolved by nature

Razvila ih je priroda

in order to get a jellyfish to glow green for whatever reason,

kako bi meduza svijetlila zeleno iz tko zna kojeg razloga,

or in order to detect the coat protein of an invading virus, for example.

ili da bi se otkrio protein s kodom virusa koji napada tijelo, na primjer.

And only much later did scientists come onto the scene

A tek mnogo kasnije su se na sceni pojavili znanstvenici

and say, "Hey, these are tools,

i rekli: "Hej, ovo je alat,

these are functions that we could use

to su funkcije koje bismo mogli koristiti

in our own research tool palette."

u vlastitoj istraživačkoj paleti alata."

And instead of applying feeble human minds

I umjesto da uposlimo nejake ljudske umove

to designing these tools from scratch,

da osmisle ove alate iz ničega,

there were these ready-made solutions right out there in nature

postojala su ova gotova rješenja negdje u prirodi

developed and refined steadily for millions of years

koje je milijunima godina neprestano razvijao i usavršavao

by the greatest engineer of all.

najveći inžinjer od svih.

Thank you.

Hvala.

(Applause)

(Pljesak)