HEALING THE BRAIN WITH LIGHT

Brain-based disorders from epilepsy and Parkinson’s Disease to depression and chronic pain could be eased, or perhaps even reversed, by lighting up parts of the brain with infrared light.
Treating brain conditions with light dates back to the early years of this century, when neuroscientists created a technology called “optogenetics.” 
The conventional technique modifies genes in specific neurons in the brain. The engineered neurons lay down communication pathways in the brain that ferry neurotransmitters to affected areas of the brain when a laser shines on a related area on the outside of the head.
However, the process still requires surgery to implant fine fiber-optic wires in the targeted part of the brain. Also, laser light doesn’t penetrate tissue very well.
The new approach injects special nanoparticles into specific spots in the brain, a far less invasive step than surgery, then focuses a small beam of x-rays onto the particles. Unlike laser light, x-rays easily penetrate living tissue. 
When x-rays strike the nanoparticles, the particles convert the energy to red light, which penetrates deeper into brain tissue than other colors.
The light stimulates relevant neurons to release brain chemicals. Those chemicals then tell other neurons to make the compounds needed to correct a chemical surplus, deficit, or imbalance causing disorders.
The research team, which involved four universities led by the Argonne National Laboratory, believes the same method could be used to treat heart problems.
TRENDPOST: A new study from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology has found that stimulating certain brain cells can spark the body’s immune system to attack and destroy cancer tumors. 
Theoretically, that also could be done with light.
The therapeutic use of light inside the body, and particularly in the brain, is a relatively new frontier in medicine that will grow to become a standard tool as medicine evolves from its current dependence on surgery and synthetic drugs to a field that uses the body’s own substances and processes to treat illness.

An artist’s rendering shows x-rays striking nanoparticles that convert the beams to red light that triggers a spurt of sodium and potassium ions that activates targeted brain neurons.
Credit: Argonne National Laboratory