Scientists Develop Cooling Technique to Safely Map the Human Brain

Scientists from NYU Langone Medical Center and the University of Iowa have found a way to safely map the human brain during complex neurosurgery, resulting from monitoring thousands of calls from songbirds. The mapping process, first tested in zebra finches, involves gently placing a miniature electrical cooling device at different locations on a small region of the songbirds’ brains. This slows down the processing of complex neural behaviors, such as a bird song or human speech. In a report presented at the 2014 annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, the NYU researchers and their colleagues described how “focal intraoperative cooling” was first studied in songbirds, and then safely applied in 18 volunteers undergoing brain surgery. During the study, volunteers who were already scheduled for brain surgery underwent focal intraoperative cooling sessions that lasted about 20 minutes each. This allowed researchers time to map the function of a half-dozen brain regions. To map each section, patients recited word lists, such as the days of the week, while researchers analyzed the structure and timing of the speech, checking for slurring and speed. Results of the study showed that the cooling session lowered regional brain temperatures by roughly 10 degrees Celsius, enabling researchers to track speech control to mostly the brain’s left hemisphere. Patients initially took four seconds to recite the weekday list, but needed longer than five seconds after cooling certain key regions of the brain. To read more about this study, click here.