Surgery’s Bigger Picture Results

The other weekend I sat down with my Saturday morning coffee and the Boston Globe to find an article about Harvard-based neuroscientist, Jeffrey Lichtman’s recent research achievements. “Harvard scientists closely map a slice of the brain,” the headline proclaimed. I was diagnosed with epilepsy at age six, so I’m always eager to read about new brain research developments. After all, they might lead to a cure for this currently uncurable condition. I read the first paragraph:

About 10 years ago, a small piece of human brain arrived in the lab of Dr. Jeff Lichtman at Harvard. It came directly from an operating room of a nearby hospital, where it was excised from an epilepsy patient undergoing a procedure to reduceher seizures.

Whoa! Now I was really intrigued. On April 29, 2014, I had a temporal lobectomy at Brigham and Women’s Hospital where the neurosurgeon removed a kiwi-sized piece of my right temporal lobe, to treat my uncontrollable seizures. And I gave her permission to donate the excised brain tissue for research purposes. Was that my brain tissue Dr. Lichtman received?

Regardless, in 2014, Dr. Lichtman’s team took the sample and fed it into a device that sliced it into impossibly thin slivers. Then they used electron microscopy to view those images and recreate the intricate cell pattern connections. About three weeks ago, Dr. Lichtman and his team unveiled their research efforts. They posted human brain images (including the ones above) on the internet with a program that allows viewers to flip through them. When you click through the gallery, the neuronal images appear abstract and psychedelic: random spiky shapes rendered in vibrant kaleidoscopic colors. “Neurons themselves are truly awe-inspiringly beautiful,” Dr. Lichtman said. While he’s partial to his own work, when I viewed images, I saw what he meant.  

Dr. Lichtman’s research is part of a larger series of projects, the BRAIN initiative. Experts in the field call his work “a pretty big deal, which has the power to transform our understanding of the human brain, improving doctors’ ability to cure neurological diseases,” including epilepsy. While the insights gleaned from that tiny brain sample haven’t yet solved all the mysteries of neurological illnesses, they provided the most detailed digital map of the human brain and its inner circuitry ever, an important first step.

While I’ll never know whether Dr. Lichtman’s team was working with my brain tissue, I do know I contributed the excised piece of my brain to somebody’s research. Whatever lab it landed in, I’m boosted by the thought of my resected brain tissue helping forward solutions to complex neurological conditions. My invasive surgery had a huge personal impact, as it eventually stopped my seizures. Reading about Dr. Lichtman’s research ten years later, I appreciate that the impact went beyond me, and hopefully helped advance somebody’s research.

Apparently, Dr. Lichtman’s next step is to image a 10-millimeter section of a mouse brain, ten times as large as the sample he received in 2014. Hopefully this opportunity to further explore unknown territory leads to an even deeper understanding of the brain’s circuitry, and ultimately advances solutions to neurological conditions.

I was less enthused to read about Google’s response to Dr. Lichtman’s efforts. Apparently, Google and others expect to use the findings to improve their ability to invent artificial intelligence algorithms that emulate the human brain. To me, this goal seems much less laudable and may even have some dangerous implications.

Last week, I emailed a copy of the Boston Globe article to my neurosurgeon, whom I thought about on April 29^th, the ten-year anniversary of my temporal lobectomy.  “I couldn’t help but wonder if the patient the article references here was me,” I said. I didn’t expect her to know the answer, but I thought she’d enjoy the article and I could acknowledge my surgery anniversary. Despite the long interval since my surgery, she responded the next day, which didn’t surprise me, as she’s always been responsive.

“It had never occurred to me that the tissue in question might be from one of my patients.  I just read the article and it is fascinating.  It would be so cool if that were from your brain, though I have absolutely no idea if that is the case.  I expect that it is untraceable, as that is part of the protocol for keeping protected patient health information private. Thank you also for the anniversary reminder.” 

As I suspected, there is no way to know whether Dr. Lichtman’s team was working with my brain tissue.  Nevertheless, I’m always excited to read about new discoveries in the field to share on my blog. They give me hope that those diagnosed with epilepsy will hopefully have an easier treatment journey than the one I outlined in my memoir, Seizing Control. That required medication trials of 14 different anti-seizure meds and two brain surgeries. Kudos to the research advancements.