
Scientists have created a new shark brain model
A new model of the brain that’s capable of understanding and predicting complex behaviours has been created, researchers say.
The research, published in Nature Neuroscience, was led by Dr. David A. Hogg, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Queensland and the head of the Department of Psychiatry at the School of Psychology at the Australian National University.
“It’s the first time we’ve seen a complete brain model, so it’s very exciting and very exciting for researchers in other fields,” Dr. Hogs said.
“The brain is really a large complex organ and the understanding of how the brain functions has been a long time coming.”
The researchers used a new, high-throughput technique called magnetic resonance imaging to image the human brain and then compared it to a model of how a human brain would respond to various stimuli.
“We then put that model to real-world situations and we found out that we were right, which is really cool,” Dr Hogg said.
Dr. Hagg’s model showed that a large part of the human cerebral cortex is involved in processing information.
It’s this area of the cortex that helps us process visual information and understand our emotions.
The brain model was used to predict how much a person would suffer from a stroke or to predict whether someone will die from heart failure.
Dr Hogg says the research could eventually help people who suffer from dementia.
“When you have these complex, recurrent, neurodegenerative diseases, it’s hard to predict if you’ll live, whether you’ll die or if you will recover,” he said.
The researchers have also created a model to predict which of their patients would be able to make an accurate diagnosis of which brain disease they have and what their prognosis is.
Dr Nick Burd, an associate professor at the Institute of Neuroscience at the Queensland Brain Institute, said he was impressed by the new work.
“What this work shows is that it’s possible to do a really accurate model of a patient’s brain function that we can then be able, in turn, to do an accurate test on, so we can make accurate diagnoses,” he told ABC Radio.
“That’s an incredible achievement, and it shows that our ability to understand how the human body works is so well developed.”
Dr Burd said it was important to be aware that this work was still very early and the researchers did not know what type of disease they would find.
“So we’re not suggesting that the brain is a perfect machine that can predict the outcome of an individual’s life,” he added.
Topics:biomedicine,science-and-technology,dementia,human-interest,diseases-and ofcom-patients,health,australia