#MSPNeurociencia | ¡Ahora! El Dr. Andrew Seeds explica cómo los circuitos neuronales transforman una simple caricia en emociones, recuerdos o reacciones, y qué implicaciones tiene esto en la salud mental y el comportamiento humano. ¡Comparte!
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00:25Soy como la gota sobre la piedra molestando poco a poco.
00:28Te encantaría deshacerte de mí, pero no es tan simple. Lo mío no es broma.
00:32Soy el dolor pélvico. Si me conoces, podrías padecerte endometriosis. Una condición seria.
00:38Conoce más sobre la misma visitando el dolor de endoeserio.com
00:42Hello, my name is Andrew Seeds. I'm an associate professor at the Institute of Neurobiology at the University of Puerto Rico Medical Sciences Campus.
00:53I'm also the director of the Institute of Neurobiology.
00:57I received my bachelor's degree from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, and that was in biology.
01:05I then went on to graduate school at Duke University, where I have a Ph.D. in pharmacology.
01:13And then I went to Janelia Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia, where I did a postdoc in neuroscience.
01:22And I'm here at the 45th annual Research and Education Forum at the University of Puerto Rico Medical Sciences Campus.
01:30¿Qué queremos decir con procesamiento táctil en el cerebro y cómo influye en nuestro comportamiento cotidiano?
01:36So our research is interested in understanding, at a high level, we're interested in understanding how neural circuits form complex behaviors by assembling sequences of different movements.
01:50That has led us into the interesting area of understanding tactile processing.
01:58So how does an animal, or a human for that matter, detect a stimulus at a particular location on the body and respond with appropriate behavior?
02:09So you might, an example of that would be that if someone was to tickle my arm, then my brain would know the precise location where the tickle was,
02:21and I could respond with a scratching movement that's directed to that site.
02:25So how does the brain do that? How does the, how does the brain, does the brain have an internal representation of, of the outside body?
02:34And how, and how is that represent, representation translated into a, a, a, a specific behavior?
02:41¿Cuáles son los principales circuitos neuronales implicados en la percepción del tacto?
02:46So, um, uh, the research that we do, uh, focuses on, um, fruit flies, uh, and, um,
02:54the reason we study fruit flies is because they, um, are a, a simpler, uh, have a simpler nervous system than humans, uh, by, by a lot.
03:04Um, yet they, the neurons in the, in the fruit fly brain, um, function in much the same way as, as, as human neurons.
03:12Um, and so, um, also fruit flies have, are, uh, a model system that, uh, arguably, uh, is one of the best model systems for, for mapping, uh, you know, neural circuit connectivity.
03:27Um, and so in, in, in our work, uh, studying the fruit flies, we have identified, uh, neurons on the body surface, uh, that detect, um, tactile stimuli.
03:39So they detect touches to different locations and we've mapped, um, those, uh, neurons, which we call mechanosensory neurons.
03:48They, they detect mechanosensory stimuli and they project into the brain where they connect with, um, uh, different types of neurons that, uh, mediate appropriate behavioral responses.
04:02And so much of our research has been focused on defining those, those, those mechanosensory connected neurons.
04:09¿Qué regiones cerebrales están más activas al traducir las sensaciones táctiles en respuestas emocionales o conductuales?
04:16Um, so far, the, the circuits that we've mapped have gone into, I guess, the, the flies version of the, the brainstem, um, uh, like, that you might find in humans.
04:27And, and, uh, there, they, um, then, uh, send projections out to other parts of the nervous system, such as the, the flies, uh, version of a spinal cord, um, and those would be descending neurons that go from the brain down to, to, to, to the flies spinal cord.
04:45And those neurons would then, uh, drive, um, different, uh, movements that, uh, that are appropriate for, uh, responding to the tactile stimulus.
04:55¿Cómo diferencia el sistema nervioso entre estímulos táctiles placenteros, dolorosos o amenazantes?
05:01So, um, in, in the fruit fly nervous system, it's, it's similar to, to the, the, the human nervous system in that there are a bunch of different, um, types of, uh, mechanosensory neurons that can detect, um, uh, different types of mechanical stimuli, such as, you know, painful stimuli, um, you know, soft touches, and, and things like that.
05:25So, it, those, those, those responses are all mediated by, by different types of, of, of mechanosensory neurons, similar to what we have on our bodies.
05:34¿Cómo se desarrollan estos circuitos neuronales durante la primera infancia? ¿Y qué ocurre si hay interrupciones en ese proceso?
05:41Okay. So, uh, we actually do study the development of these circuits in our lab. Um, we study how they're connected and, and how they develop. Um, and they, what we found is that, um, the circuits that respond to, to touches, uh, at different locations on the body are all derived from, um, a common stem cell.
06:07So, so, so early in development, um, uh, one stem cell, uh, divides and differentiates to, um, produce a whole set of neurons that, um, receive, and these, these neurons differentiate and they receive inputs from different locations on the head.
06:25So, so, so one subset of these developmentally wrote, um, related neurons might receive, uh, inputs from, from the top part of the head.
06:34Whereas another set of these developmentally related neurons would receive inputs from, from the bottom part of the head.
06:40So, it's a very interesting, um, developmentally related, uh, circuit architecture that, that we, we study, and, um, we, we've recently kind of discovered this developmental program, and we're, we're, uh, we haven't actually published it yet.
06:54So, it's, it's something that we're, we're working on now to, to submit for publication.
06:59¿Cuál es la relación entre el procesamiento táctil atípico y condiciones como el autismo o la ansiedad?
07:05That, I do not have the expertise to, to address, um, if you're looking for, um, kind of the, the, the medical relevance of our research, um, maybe I should take a step back and explain a little more about what we do.
07:24So, um, the context, the behavioral context in which we do our research is focused on, um, grooming behavior.
07:32Uh, we study the grooming behavior of flies because, um, our, our kind of broader interest is in understanding how neural circuits form complex behaviors by assembling sequences of different movements.
07:45And you might, you might, uh, think about a complex behavior is all of the different movements that you would perform to, um, prepare a meal.
07:55So, you just, you perform a series of distinct movements while you're, while you're preparing a meal.
08:00And, um, and so when you have defects in the neural, uh, mechanisms that, that are responsible for driving, um, such complex movement sequences,
08:12those, um, defects will often manifest in, in, um, repetitive behavioral disorders, such as, uh, what you might find in autism spectrum disorder or, um, obsessive compulsive disorder, um, maybe trichotillomania where, where people kind of can't stop pulling their hair out.
08:34And, and so the, the, the, the, the neural mechanisms that we study, uh, ultimately, uh, uh, impinge on these different brain regions.
08:42And, and so, um, the, the, the, the hope is that by studying, um, the, the, the, um, sequential behaviors in fruit flies, we might be able to, um, uh, make some inroads into understanding these types of repetitive behaviors.
09:01And I'll give you one example.
09:03So, we study, um, grooming behavior in fruit flies, uh, which, uh, consists of a highly stereotyped sequence of different movements.
09:10And that's why we study it because it's so, uh, predictable that it provides a great kind of behavior to study in the lab.
09:17It's easy to induce and it's highly predictable.
09:20Um, and there are mutations that, um, humans can have that, um, make them susceptible to different types of repetitive behavioral disorders.
09:31And if you make those kinds of, um, mutation, those same mutations in animals, um, often the way that the repetitive behavior manifests in animals is the, the animals over groom.
09:44So they spend a lot of time cleaning their bodies.
09:47Um, and in fact, you can make mutations in, in some genes and in rodents where, where the mice will groom so much that their skin becomes raw.
09:56And, um, um, interestingly, we study fruit flies in our lab because of the kind of great genetic tools for mapping neural circuits.
10:06And you can make some of these same mutations in fruit flies, and they will also, uh, groom excessively.
10:14So, so the, um, the types of circuits that I've been describing to you in, in, um, in, with your previous questions in this interview, um, they've really been focused on understanding how a fly detects a, you know, a mechanical stimulus, such as a piece of, uh, dirt on its particular body or a tickle or a tactile stimulus that would cause them to groom that particular location.
10:40And we've, we've, we've had a lot of success in, in, in identifying the neural circuits that drive these, these grooming movements.
10:48Um, and, and so I think that, um, the, the hope here is that what we, we, we plan on doing is with the neural circuits that we've identified that, that drive grooming behavior, that we will be able to then, um, determine how mutations, uh, uh, from humans that cause kind of repetitive behaviors
11:10in flies, how those mutations, how those mutations impact the grooming neural circuits that we study.
11:16And, um, I think this will provide us with, uh, uh, kind of a, a, a real advantage in mapping how, how genetic defects can lead to, to over grooming in flies.
11:27And, and, um, and then the hope is that that would be, uh, translatable to understanding more about how, uh, these genes cause repetitive behavior in humans.
11:36It's, it's, it's interesting that across species, you can have the same types of genes mutated and get the same behavioral, uh, outcome, the same repetitive behavior, but the, the, you know, fruit flies and humans are, are kind of drastically, uh, different separated by, you know, half a billion years of evolution.
11:57So, uh, there, there, there must be some common element there, uh, that is, is, is leading to these common behavioral defects.
12:06Again, that's, that's, uh, at least in fruit flies, we haven't, uh, noticed, uh, you know, um, differences between the sexes.
12:23But that, but to be fair, we haven't, um, that hasn't been something that we've addressed directly.
12:28So, um, at least based on, on, on, on the studies that we've done in our lab, I, I'm not aware of any, um, kind of, um, sex-based differences in, in tactile processing.
12:39So, um, one of the, the, uh, advances in neuroscience that we have really used to our advantage is, um, connectomics.
12:56So, um, what is connectomics? Um, uh, several groups around the world have begun doing very high resolution, um, uh, mapping of, uh,
13:09neurons in the brain. So what they do is they take, um, whole brains. For example, you could take a, a, a whole fly brain and serial section that brain into, um, thousands of slices and then image that brain, uh, at high resolution using electron microscopy.
13:28And, uh, what you get from that are millions of very high resolution images that provide you with, uh, synapse level details of, of the neurons and their connections.
13:41And all of these images are then stitched together into a 3D volume of the brain.
13:48And, um, and, um, and so what people have then done is used, uh, artificial intelligence to reconstruct, uh, neurons from, from those, uh, those, uh, um, electron microscopy volumes and also identify, use machine vision-based, uh, methods to identify all of their synapses.
14:10And, uh, uh, use, uh, uh, use artificial intelligence to predict the neurotransmitters, uh, that are, that are used by those neurons with, um, very high confidence.
14:21And so, uh, what does that allow you to do? Well, you now have an entire brain, uh, all of the neurons reconstructed.
14:29You have all of their connections with other neurons and you know what their, uh, neurotransmitters are.
14:36So this allows you to produce, uh, maps of the brain.
14:41So you can, you can identify the neurons that, that you're interested in, such as neurons that return, that respond to, um, touches different locations on the body.
14:51And then you can identify all of their, uh, their connections.
14:55And so we've, um, used this type of, of data set and in our research, and it's really, uh, dramatically enhanced what it is we can, we can do in the lab.
15:06So, I think I, I touched on it a little bit, uh, you know, our kind of long-term interest in the lab is to understand how, um, the neural circuits that we study, um, that drive, uh, grooming behavior and fruit flies, how those neural circuits can become kind of, uh, abnormally regulated when you have a
15:36uh, uh, mutations that cause the flies to over groom.
15:40And, um, so that, that's our long-term goal.
15:43And the hope is that this will reveal, you know, provide, um, an advantage or provide, uh, a look at, uh, repetitive behavior.
15:52That's not possible, um, to obtain in humans because we just don't have the same, you know, tools and inability to, to achieve the same level of, of, of understanding about the, the neural circuit organization and how, um, mutations impact these circuits.
16:10So, the advantage of fruit flies, um, is that they are very genetically amenable to, uh, to the, these types of experiments.
16:19El dolor que causa la endometriosis no es un show, es un dolor extremo durante la menstruación y durante el sexo.
16:28Endometriosis, tómala en serio a ella y a la enfermedad.
16:31Habla con tu médico y visita eldolordeendoeserio.com.
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