From Our Neurons to Yours

This week on From Our Neurons to Yours, we're talking about using new techniques for growing human brain tissue in the lab to solve a rare neurological disorder.Host Nicholas Weiler sits down with Sergiu Pasca an innovative Stanford scientist who has developed groundbreaking technologies to grow human brain tissue in the lab, creating "organoids" and "assembloids" that model brain disorders like autism and schizophrenia. Pasca describes the process of turning patient skin cells into embryo-like stem cells and then into functional brain cells that can live and develop for over two years, and even be transplanted into rat brains to study their growth and development.It may sound like science fiction, but these techniques represent a major step toward understanding and treating complex neurological conditions such as Timothy syndrome, a rare genetic disorder whose biology Pasca has spent the past 15 years unraveling. Join us for fascinating glimpse into the future of developmental neuroscience and  potential for new therapies for our remarkable self-assembling brains.Learn moreBrain organoids and assembloids are new models for elucidating, treating neurodevelopmental disorders | News Center | Stanford MedicineImpact of genes linked to neurodevelopmental diseases found | News Center | Stanford MedicineScientists discover how dozens of genes may contribute to autism - The Washington PostStudy suggests approach for treating rare disorder | National Institutes of Health (NIH)How lab-grown brain cells can now help us understand brain disordersEpisode CreditsThis episode was produced by Michael Osborne, with production assistance by Morgan Honaker, and hosted by Nicholas Weiler. Art by Aimee Garza.Send us a text!Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends. That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Today, we're going to talk about virtual reality and how it could be used to treat depression. We're talking with psychiatrist Kim Bullock, the founding director of Stanford's Neurobehavioral Clinic and Virtual Reality & Immersive Technologies (VRIT) program. Dr. Bullock — a physician certified in Neuropsychiatry, Psychiatry, and Lifestyle Medicine — calls herself a "radical behaviorist." Like other practitioners of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), she sees the troublesome thoughts and emotional states of many psychiatric disorders as just another form of behavior, which can be reshaped through self awareness and practice — much like you might work at avoiding junk food or not biting your nails.Of course, one of the biggest challenges is the practice part. It's no easy task for patients to practice experiencing the world in a more positive, healthy way. This is why Bullock is eager for practitioners of CBT and related forms of psychotherapy to embrace virtual reality technologies — which enable psychiatrists to prescribe precisely calibrated "experiences" to treat cognitive & behavioral disorders.We started by discussing early results from a clinical trial for a virtual reality-enhanced intervention major depressive disorder, which Dr. Bullock recently launched with support from the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute Neuroscience:Translate program. Join us to learn more about how VR is transforming the world of psychotherapy!Learn MoreImagining virtual reality as a simple tool to treat depression  (Stanford Medicine, 2024)Extended Reality(XR) enhanced behavioral activation for treatment of Major Depressive Disorder (2022 Neuroscience:Translate grant)Clinical Trial: Virtual Reality Behavioral Activation: An Intervention for Major Depressive DisorderThe Stanford Virtual Reality and Immersive Technologies (VR-IT) ProgramRecent VR-IT publicationsEpisode CreditsThis episode was produced by Michael Osborne, with production assistance by Morgan Honaker, and hosted by Nicholas Weiler. Art by Aimee Garza.Send us a text!Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends. That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

The skin is full of contradictions. It’s soft and sensitive, but also tough and resilient, even self-healing. It’s both the barrier that protects us from infections and our most intimate connection with the outside world. Today’s guest, Zhenan Bao, has spent the last two decades reverse engineering the skin’s many remarkable properties in order to create wearable electronics that are just as soft, flexible, and versatile as the skin itself.Bao envisions a world where stick-on devices could help heal injuries, manage anxiety, and even enhance our perceptions, and soft, implanted devices could give neurosciences new insights into the workings of the body and brain.In today’s episode, we talk about what makes the skin such an intriguing problem for an engineer like Bao; some of the many applications of her technology for medicine, neuroscience, and mental health; and its potential to enhance or extend our perceptions.Bao is K.K. Lee Professor of Chemical Engineering at Stanford and founding director of eWEAR — the Stanford Wearable Electronics Initiative.Learn MoreBao Lab websiteStanford Wearable Electronics Initiative (eWEAR)Advancing toward wearable, stretchable electronics | Stanford News (2024)Soft ‘e-skin’ that talks to the brain | Stanford News (2023)The Science of Skin | STANFORD magazine (2023)Skin Inspired Electronics: Changing the Future of Electronics with Zhenan Bao (2023)Dr. Zhenan Bao Keynote - Stanford Center for Precision Mental Health & Wellness Symposium (2022)Episode CreditsThis episode was produced by Michael Osborne, with production assistance by Morgan Honaker, and hosted by Nicholas Weiler. Art by Aimee Garza.Send us a text!Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends. That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

This week, we're diving into recent research that sheds light on a new form of brain plasticity involving changes in the insulation of nerve fibers — called myelin.  It turns out that myelin plasticity is implicated in a number of serious conditions, from epilepsy to drug abuse and addiction.We're excited to bring back two previous guests on the show to share their insights on this previously unknown form of plasticity:  Stanford psychiatry professor Rob Malenka (S1 E1 - Psychedelics and Empathy),  a pioneer in the study of synaptic plasticity and addiction, and neuro-oncologist Michelle Monje (S1 E12 - Brain Fog), who made some of the very first observations of myelin plasticity in the brain, essentially founding this field.Together, they discuss their recent findings on the role of myelin plasticity in opioid addiction and its implications for understanding addictive behaviors.Get ready to nerd out as we uncover a new angle on our brain's remarkable capacity for change.Learn MoreMyelination in the brain may be key to ‘learning’ opioid addiction | Stanford Medicine (2024)Adaptive and maladaptive myelination in health and disease | Nature Reviews Neurology (2022)Brain plasticity promotes worsening of epileptic seizures, study finds | Stanford Medicine (2022)The Brain Learns in Unexpected Ways | Scientific American (2020)Brain boosting: It's not just grey matter that matters | New Scientist (2015)Neural activity promotes brain plasticity through myelin growth, researchers find | News Center | Stanford Medicine (2014)Episode CreditsThis episode was produced by Michael Osborne, with production assistance by Morgan Honaker, and hosted by Nicholas Weiler. Art by Aimee Garza.Send us a text!Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends. That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

-- We're re-releasing our conversation with Carla Shatz, one of our favorites from the archive, which comes up all the time on the show in the context of brain plasticity and aging. Enjoy, and see you next time! -NW -- When we're kids, our brains are amazing at learning. We absorb information from the outside world with ease, and we can adapt to anything. But as we age, our brains become a little more fixed. Our brain circuits become a little less flexible. You may have heard of a concept called neuroplasticity, our brain's ability to change or rewire itself. This is of course central to learning and memory, but it's also important for understanding a surprisingly wide array of medical conditions, including things like epilepsy, depression, even Alzheimer's disease. Today's guest, Carla Shatz, is a pioneer in understanding how our brains are sculpted by our experiences. She's credited with coining the phrase neurons that fire together, wire together. Her work over the past 40 years is foundational to how we understand the brain today. So I was excited to talk to Shatz about our brain's capacity for change, and I started off by asking about this sort of simple question, why exactly do we have this learning superpower as kids to do things like pick up languages and why does it go away?Shatz is Sapp Family Provostial Professor of Biology and of Neurobiology and the Catherine Holman Johnson director of Stanford Bio-X. Learn MoreIn conversation with Carla Shatz (Nature Neuroscience)Carla Shatz, her breakthrough discovery in vision and the developing brain (Stanford Medicine Magazine)Making an Old Brain Young | Carla Shatz (TEDxStanford)Carla Shatz Kavli Prize Laureate LectureStanford scientists discover a protein in nerves that determines which brain connections stay and which go (Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute)Episode CreditsThis episode was produced by Webby award-winning producer Michael Osborne, with production assistance by Morgan Honaker, and hosted by Nicholas Weiler. Art by Aimee Garza.Send us a text!Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends. That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Hi everyone — quick programming announcement. As we head into summer, we'll be moving to an every-other-week cadence as we prepare more conversations from the frontiers of neuroscience. I'm very excited about what we're working on for you, so stay tuned!In the meantime, we'd love to hear from you! Email us at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu with your thoughts, praise, critiques, or just to say hello. That's all for now. See you next time!Send us a text!Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends. That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Neuroscientist Surya Ganguli discusses the intersection of neuroscience and AI, exploring how advanced AI tools challenge our notions of computer intelligence. The conversation delves into the efficiency and adaptability of AI systems compared to the human brain, the importance of data efficiency and error reduction in AI models, and the potential collaboration between artificial and biological intelligence in brain modeling and memory prosthetics.

Neuroscientist Anthony Wagner discusses memory formation, brain activation patterns, and multitasking's impact on memory recall. He explores how the hippocampus integrates sensory inputs and the importance of strategic practice for optimizing memory retention.

Today, we're going to talk about how psychedelics alter our perception of reality and what that says about... reality! Welcome  to part two of our conversation with Stanford anesthesiologist and psychedelics researcher Boris Heifets! Last time, we talked with Boris about the question of why psychedelics help people with mental health disorders. This week, we're going to dive into a different question, which is to explore how psychedelics work in the brain. How are they able to alter something as fundamental as our perceptions of reality — and could understanding these effects teach us about the nature of our everyday perceptions?Learn more:Review: Therapeutic mechanisms of psychedelics and entactogens (Heifets and Olsen, 2024)As psychedelics near approval, there’s no consensus on how they work (STAT News, 2023)How do psychedelics work? (Carhart-Harris, 2019)Heifets Lab websiteEpisode creditsThis episode was produced by Michael Osborne at 14th Street Studios, with production assistance by Morgan Honaker. Our logo is by Aimee Garza. The show is hosted by Nicholas Weiler at Stanford's Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. Send us a text!Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends. That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Psychedelics are a hot topic in psychiatry today.  They’re producing dramatic reversals for patients with severe depression, PTSD, and other mental health conditions. But scientists still have fundamental questions about why these drugs are so effective. For example, is the "trip" even necessary? Some think it is not and are working to design drugs with similar brain chemistry but no psychoactive effects — “Taking the trip out of the drug.” Others suspect that many of the benefits of psychedelics can be attributed to hype and expectation: People expect to get better, so they do. Normally scientists control for placebo using a blinded study where patients don't know if they're getting the real treatment or a sugar pill. But how are you going to do this with mind-altering substances? Patients are probably going to figure out pretty quickly whether they got a sugar cube with or without LSD. Today's guest, Stanford anesthesiologist Boris Heifets, has come up with a particularly clever strategy to tease apart the psychedelic experience, biochemistry, hype and placebo. Listen for the whole story!Learn more:The Heifets Lab at Stanford MedicineThe Early Days of a Psychedelic Resurgence? (Stanford Medicine Magazine, 2024)Depression, ketamine & anesthesia:Randomized trial of ketamine masked by surgical anesthesia in patients with depression (Nature 2023 - paywall)Ketamine’s effect on depression may hinge on hope (Stanford Medicine, 2023)Anesthetic dreams and trauma recovery:Case report 1: dreaming & knife attack (A & A Practice, 2022 - paywall)Case report 2: dreaming & PTSD (American Journal of Psychiatry, 2024)Could anesthesia-induced dreams wipe away trauma? (Stanford Medicine, 2024)Video: Mothers with PTSD following their sons' deaths talk about dreaming of their sons under anesthesia (Heifets Lab, 2024 — content advisory)Related episodes:S1 E1: Psychedelics and EmpathyS3 E3: OCD and KetamineSend us a text!Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends. That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.