Deep brain activity: Stimulating neurons to create networks

The brain controls our thinking, feelings and movements and a new exhibition in southern France aims to reveal some of its secrets. European researchers are trying to unlock the brain's deepest mysteries - and its amazing capacities. The exhibition is called Cervorama. Its curator Vincent Jouanneau told euronews: "Evolution led to the creation of many different brains in animals, each of them with very different capabilities. And even in human beings, we have brains that differ a lot from one individual to another. Depending on how we are going to use our brain, on our life experiences, on our accumulated knowledge, we will develop more or less cognitive functions. This plasticity is what transforms our brain into a unique organ, perfectly adapted to each individual". "In the past, brains could only be studied in corpses, during or after autopsies. Nowadays, we are able to watch, in real-time, a live brain working thanks to medical imaging. These innovations are helping us understand much better how our brains work," Jouanneau adds. "Of course, everybody is afraid of touching this fragile human organ. Neurosurgery is not an anodyne appendicitis operation. Dealing with the brain still creates apprehension." *Doing away with drilling* One hospital in Lithuania is undertaking an unusual test. Patients with head trauma are provided with strange plastic glasses to measure the pressure on their brain tissues. Until now, these measurements - key to determining if patients are at risk of further brain damage - involved literally drilling into the skull. That is a dangerous and costly procedure which each year prevents more than one million European patients from having a proper examination of their brain injures. Vilnius University neurosurgeon Saulius Rocka believes the figure soon be a thing of the past: "This platform gives us, neurosurgeons, the possibility to understand what is happening in the brain without being invasive. Invasive measurements are nowadays standard in neurosurgery. But you can't use invasive measurements, for instance, with conscious patients. This equipment enables us…