Research that hits home
Story by Janet Harvey/Photos by Trudie Lee and Michael Colicos
Neuroscientist Dr. Michael Colicos has studied epilepsy for almost twenty years. But when the disorder was diagnosed in his infant daughter, his research took on new meaning.
When Alexandra Colicos experienced her first epileptic seizure at the age of nine months, her father understood better than most what was happening to his little girl: AHFMR Scholar Dr. Michael Colicos studies nerve-cell connections in the brain. During the 15 years prior to his daughter's diagnosis, he had been examining how these connections change when we learn and remember things, and how they go wrong in conditions such as epilepsy and autism.
Suddenly he had a much more personal interest in what was happening in those cells during epileptic seizure. "It's very strange. On one hand, I'm a neuroscientist, fascinated with what the brain is doing," he says. "But on the other, I'm her father, and it's my little girl that is having a seizure." Dr. Colicos, an avid photographer, has used his camera to document much of Alexandra's painful and exhausting journey, including her treatments.
While aspects of the situation are heartrending, his dual role gives Dr. Colicos a new perspective on the disorders he studies. And the technology he has developed gives him new insights. He uses photoconductive stimulation to work with networks of brain cells (neurons) and to make live movies of their activity. This tool, created by growing the nerve cells on silicon chips, allows researchers to observe the cells in great detail and with great clarity. "Neurons in the brain are very dynamic," says Dr. Colicos. "They're constantly communicating and looking for new connections with other neurons."
His technology provides dramatic illustrations of this constant activity. Nerve cells in normal networks flash one after another in seemingly random locations, like stars twinkling in a night sky. Cells that have genes associated with autism flash on and off in a smooth wave that seems to move across the neural network. And cells in a state of induced seizure go off like an explosion: all the cells fire very fast-like the night sky suddenly burning out. And some of them do in fact die.
"Now that we can directly observe how these neurons behave in real time, we need to figure out why this happens," says Dr. Colicos. "Why do cells communicate differently in these disorders?"
Photoconductive stimulation has a great deal of potential for helping to answer this question-and others. For example, it can be used to test drugs such as anti-epileptic therapies: researchers can see their effect on nerve cells in great detail. It provides an alternative to testing drugs on live animals, because researchers can take the brain cells from one rat and make hundreds of these chips. And it can be used to test new therapeutic approaches for other medical conditions, such as stroke and spinal cord injury.
Dr. Colicos uses the technology to study the neuron connections involved in learning and memory. "If you stimulate a cell repeatedly, it forms new connections," he explains. "These connections between your neurons change the way you think-which is what occurs when you learn or remember something. In the brain, all of the neurons work at the same time. While your laptop might have a dual-core processor, the brain has close to a trillion cores working together. This is how the incredible information-processing abilities of the brain arise."
So what does this knowledge of how brain cells connect mean for little Alexandra? Even the most innovative and groundbreaking research can take years to evolve into a treatment that can be used in the clinic. Dr. Colicos's studies could have an impact on future treatments for epilepsy and other disorders, but such possibilities are a still a long way off. For now, Alexandra's best hope is that she might simply outgrow her condition; that happens in about half of all cases of childhood epilepsy. Now two-and-a-half years old, she has seizures that occur in clusters. Over a period of days, they can be as frequent as every hour; but the cluster can be followed by months without any problems.
"As a parent, I find it very hard to see her go through this," says Dr. Colicos. "But it helps that the people treating my daughter are colleagues of mine who also research epilepsy. I know first-hand that she's getting the best care and that we're all working to better understand her disorder."
What is epilepsy?
Epilepsy is a neurological disorder characterized by sudden, recurrent seizures. A seizure is caused by a temporary change in the brain's electrical functioning. The disorder affects approximately 50 million people worldwide, including about 200,000 in Canada. There is no cure for epilepsy, but long-term drug therapy can reduce the frequency and severity of seizures. In some cases when medication fails, surgery is recommended. In about 50% of childhood cases of epilepsy, seizures disappear as the child grows older.
Sources
Epilepsy Canada
http://www.epilepsy.ca
Epilepsy.com
http://www.epilepsy.com