This is a thousand-year-old drawing of the brain. It's a diagram of the visual system. And some things look very familiar today. Two eyes at the bottom, optic nerve flowing out from the back. There's a very large nose that doesn't seem to be connected to anything in particular.
這個大腦的繪圖有一千年的歷史。 它畫的是視覺系統, 即使在幾天也看起來有些眼熟。 兩個眼睛在下面,視神經將它們連接著後面。 它有一個似乎沒有和任何 東西連接起來的很大的鼻子。
And if we compare this to more recent representations of the visual system, you'll see that things have gotten substantially more complicated over the intervening thousand years. And that's because today we can see what's inside of the brain, rather than just looking at its overall shape.
而如果我們將它與 一些最近的視覺系統的描繪做比較的話, 你會看到在過去的幾千年中 很多東西都變的更為複雜了。 由過去只能在外面看著大概的輪廓, 今天我們能直接觀察大腦內部。
Imagine you wanted to understand how a computer works and all you could see was a keyboard, a mouse, a screen. You really would be kind of out of luck. You want to be able to open it up, crack it open, look at the wiring inside. And up until a little more than a century ago, nobody was able to do that with the brain. Nobody had had a glimpse of the brain's wiring.
想像一下如果你想明白一個電腦是如何工作的, 但你這能看到一個鍵盤,一個滑鼠,一個顯示屏。 那你真的滿不幸的。 你會想把它打開, 然後觀察內部。 而直到一個多世紀之前, 沒有人可以如此對待大腦。 哪怕是一絲大腦線路的知識也沒有人有。
And that's because if you take a brain out of the skull and you cut a thin slice of it, put it under even a very powerful microscope, there's nothing there. It's gray, formless. There's no structure. It won't tell you anything.
而那是因為如果你把大腦從頭骨中取出後 並且將它切成薄片, 然後放在最大功率的顯微鏡下, 你也不會看到任何東西。 它是形體不明的一片灰色。 你看不到結構。它不能告訴你任何東西。
And this all changed in the late 19th century. Suddenly, new chemical stains for brain tissue were developed and they gave us our first glimpses at brain wiring. The computer was cracked open.
而這在十九世紀後期全部都改變了。 突然,新的大腦組織的化學染料被開發了出來, 讓我們第一次能夠看到大腦的線路。 電腦被解讀了。
So what really launched modern neuroscience was a stain called the Golgi stain. And it works in a very particular way. Instead of staining all of the cells inside of a tissue, it somehow only stains about one percent of them. It clears the forest, reveals the trees inside. If everything had been labeled, nothing would have been visible. So somehow it shows what's there.
而真正開始了現代神經學的是一個 叫做高爾基染色法的染料。 而它以一種特殊的方式起它的作用。 它只會染一片組織中大概百分之一的細胞, 而不是染全部細胞。 它在大森林中顯現出幾棵樹。 如果所有東西都被染上,那其實什麽東西也看不到。 而它用某種方式展現了它的功能。
Spanish neuroanatomist Santiago Ramon y Cajal, who's widely considered the father of modern neuroscience, applied this Golgi stain, which yields data which looks like this, and really gave us the modern notion of the nerve cell, the neuron. And if you're thinking of the brain as a computer, this is the transistor. And very quickly Cajal realized that neurons don't operate alone, but rather make connections with others that form circuits just like in a computer. Today, a century later, when researchers want to visualize neurons, they light them up from the inside rather than darkening them. And there's several ways of doing this. But one of the most popular ones involves green fluorescent protein. Now green fluorescent protein, which oddly enough comes from a bioluminescent jellyfish, is very useful. Because if you can get the gene for green fluorescent protein and deliver it to a cell, that cell will glow green -- or any of the many variants now of green fluorescent protein, you get a cell to glow many different colors.
西班牙的神經解剖學專家 聖地亞哥·拉蒙-卡哈爾 被普遍稱為現代神經學之父, 他使用了高爾基染法並展現了如此一般的信息, 而這給了我們神經細胞,神經元,的現代概念。 而如果你把大腦想成一個電腦, 它便是電晶體。 很快的,卡哈爾意識到 神經元並不單獨的運作, 而是與其他神經元連成 像電腦一樣的電路。 在一個世紀後的今天,當研究員們想要看神經元的時候, 他們將它們從內部亮起,而不是使它們變的更暗。 它有幾種方法。 但最受歡迎的一個 要用到螢光蛋白。 這種從一種生物發光的海蜇中 得來的綠色螢光蛋白 非常的有用。 因為如果你能夠得到這種綠色螢光蛋白的基因 並將它植入一個細胞, 這個細胞會發出綠色的螢光 -- 如果你使用綠色螢光蛋白的其他變體, 你可以讓細胞發出不同顏色的螢光。
And so coming back to the brain, this is from a genetically engineered mouse called "Brainbow." And it's so called, of course, because all of these neurons are glowing different colors.
回到大腦, 這是從一個叫做“腦虹”的改基因老鼠。 這是因為,當然, 所有的這些神經元都在發出不同顏色的螢光。
Now sometimes neuroscientists need to identify individual molecular components of neurons, molecules, rather than the entire cell. And there's several ways of doing this, but one of the most popular ones involves using antibodies. And you're familiar, of course, with antibodies as the henchmen of the immune system. But it turns out that they're so useful to the immune system because they can recognize specific molecules, like, for example, the coat protein of a virus that's invading the body. And researchers have used this fact in order to recognize specific molecules inside of the brain, recognize specific substructures of the cell and identify them individually.
有些時候神經學家需要識別出 特定的神經元的分子部構, 而不是整個細胞。 這也有幾種方式可以達成, 但最受歡迎的一種 使用到了抗體。 你肯定對於 免疫系統的抗體非常熟悉。 而它們在免疫系統中如此的重要是 因為它們可以識別特定的分子, 比如一個侵入身體的病毒 的外層蛋白。 研究員們用這種功能 來識別大腦中特定的分子, 或者認出細胞的特定結構 并單獨的識別它們。
And a lot of the images I've been showing you here are very beautiful, but they're also very powerful. They have great explanatory power. This, for example, is an antibody staining against serotonin transporters in a slice of mouse brain.
我展示的很多的圖像都非常美麗, 但它們同時也很厲害。 它們可以解釋很多東西。 比如說這個,它是經過對血清素運輸分子的 抗體染色的的一片老鼠大腦。
And you've heard of serotonin, of course, in the context of diseases like depression and anxiety. You've heard of SSRIs, which are drugs that are used to treat these diseases. And in order to understand how serotonin works, it's critical to understand where the serontonin machinery is. And antibody stainings like this one can be used to understand that sort of question.
你應該在談論像憂鬱和焦慮癥一樣的病時 聽說過血清素。 你也聽說過 SSRIs(選擇性血清素回收抑制劑), 這種藥物被用來治療這些病。 而如果想明白血清素是怎麼起作用的, 我們必須先明白血清素的部位在哪裡。 而像這個的抗體染色 可以被用來解答類似的問題。
I'd like to leave you with the following thought: Green fluorescent protein and antibodies are both totally natural products at the get-go. They were evolved by nature in order to get a jellyfish to glow green for whatever reason, or in order to detect the coat protein of an invading virus, for example. And only much later did scientists come onto the scene and say, "Hey, these are tools, these are functions that we could use in our own research tool palette." And instead of applying feeble human minds to designing these tools from scratch, there were these ready-made solutions right out there in nature developed and refined steadily for millions of years by the greatest engineer of all. Thank you. (Applause)
我想為你們留下這樣一個信息: 綠色螢光蛋白和抗體 都是完全的自然產品。 它們從自然演化而來, 以便讓一個海蜇因為一些原因可以發出綠色的螢光, 或者來發現一個入侵的病毒的外層蛋白。 而在很久很久以後,科學家才發現 並說,“這些都是工具, 我們可以把它們的功用 加入到我們研究的手段中。” 而與其用有限的大腦來 從頭設計這些工具, 這些被做好的答案已經出現在自然 並用了幾百萬年的時間來發展和穩定下來。 自然是最偉大的工程師。 謝謝。 (掌聲)