NOTICIA 2 GISELA BOADA

Creating a Window Into a Fly’s Brain

SCIENTIFIC SCOPE

This is the title of a recent news that I’ve found in the famous digital newspaper “The New York Times” the 20^st of October 2016. This news talks about experiments with flies that try to investigate their brains and compare it with the human ones so we can considerate this is a MEDICINE scientific news or more specific, NEUROLOGY.

This is the link where I’ve found it  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/06/science/creating-a-window-into-a-flys-brain.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fsciencetake&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection&_r=0

SUMMARY

Although we usually thing that the human’s brain is unique in the world and is difficult to compare it with the one of another specie we are wrong.  Investigators have found that flies have a similar functioning of the brain as the humans do. So, two scientists (Dr Katsuki and Dhruv Grover) have done experiments to observe it.

One challenge was to track the fly as it moved. They solved that problem with three cameras to follow the fly and a laser to activate the fluorescent chemicals in the brain.

The other was the delicate matter of making a window into the fly’s brain. For that, Dr. Katsuki said, he removed the top of a fly’s head and glued in place a tiny glass window. It had to seal off the brain so that it wouldn’t dry out, and it had to be flat, to avoid optical distortion.

COMENTARY

This article, is really interesting because the fact of being able to study the brain’s flies in their natural habitat, and in consequence, comparing it with the one of a human, is a really big progress in neurology

This allow as to work with flies as we could do with humans, but in a little scale, so flies don’t suffer as much as humans would do if they had to be tasted. Even though people could think that many flies have died during these experiments, in the article they say that this Scientifics were very conscious about the importance of flies life, and only a few number of flies died.

The importance of these experiments is that it will make us to know more of our brain (we don’t know so much about it yet), and knowing more about it in a future, means that maybe we will find a cure for some diseases or we can understand human behavior.

GLOSSARY

GLUED : (to glue) enganxar

SEAL OFF: tencar

DRY OUT: assecar

NEUROLOGY:  is a branch of medicine dealing with disorders of the nervous system.