by Bryan Gibel
Daily Lobo
Imagine a simple device that can be placed on your head to help you remember things faster.
It sounds like something out of a science-fiction movie, but researchers at the MIND Institute, a nonprofit research institute on North Campus, are taking steps to make it a reality.
And they're looking for research subjects.
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The MIND Institute -- Mental Illness and Neuroscience Discovery - uses advanced imaging technology and genetics to look at the human brain like never before, said professor John Rasure, the institute's president and CEO.
It aims to help people by better understanding intelligence, creativity, mental illness and traumatic brain injury, he said.
"There are a lot of mental illnesses that we don't have cures for now. Before we get to a cure we have to be able to identify the disease, which is what we're working on," he said. "We're also looking at how the brain develops, because if you understand that, you can develop techniques to increase learning."
Improving intelligence and curing schizophrenia
Professor Vince Clark, scientific director for the institute, conducts research on memory, addiction and schizophrenia.
One of his projects looks at the way low levels of electricity influence brain function, he said.
"If you put a very small current on someone's head, you can influence how much they remember - how fast they learn," he said.
He said the brain changes its physical structure when humans experience and remember things.
The brain usually requires a lot of repetition to understand and remember things, which makes it hard to unlearn things once they've been learned, he said.
But Clark is working on a simple device that runs off a nine-volt battery that can speed up the way the brain restructures itself during learning.
"It's risky," he said. "But if it's successful, it would be huge. In the future, we could conceivably manufacture these devices for about $3."
Clark said wearing the device is probably less dangerous than sticking a nine-volt battery to your tongue.
And although the project is just getting set up, some people have performed 20 percent to 30 percent better on intelligence tests using the new technology, he said.
Another project deals with schizophrenia, which is more common than many people think, he said.
"There are probably a few people who walk around, and nobody knows it, but they hear voices," he said. "For some people, this becomes invasive and dominating emotionally, and there is very little a psychiatrist can do."
Clark said the best treatment for schizophrenia is prevention, since patients usually go downhill fast once symptoms appear without early treatment.
Researchers at the institute are using brain imaging technology to find signatures of schizophrenia before its onset, he said.
"This work is being done in very few places because it costs a fortune," he said. "What we do is so unique it's very hard to get the people to do it."
Clark is also working on studies to improve recovery rates from cocaine addiction, he said.
He said only about 10 percent of cocaine addicts break their addiction.
"What we're trying to do is push this research forward so that it will be useful," he said. "My ultimate goal is to prevent and cure mental illness and addiction."
Exploring the MIND
The institute was started in 1998 when Sen. Pete Domenici helped secure $10 million from the Department of Energy to develop a headquarters for the National Foundation for Functional Brain Imaging.
The institute connects researchers at UNM, Harvard, MIT, University of Minnesota, and Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories, Rasure said.
"The concept was to bring together some of the best institutions in the country to collaborate in developing new neuroimaging technology,"
he said.
In 2005, the institute moved from a smaller building on South Campus to 1101 Yale Blvd. N.E., a 50,000 square-foot facility that cost about $18 million.
The building was paid for by UNM, the National Institute for Health and the U.S. Department of Energy, Rasure said.
He said funding for the institute's research comes from the federal government, the New Mexico Legislature, and individual donors and foundations.
In order to push the frontiers of neuroscience investigation, the institute uses cutting-edge technology.
One device, the magnetoencephalogram, is a large machine that descends over a seated patient's head.
"You can use the tool to locate in three dimensions where problems in the brain are," he said. "Literally, in real time, you can look at what's going on in the brain."
The machine is particularly effective at helping researchers gain a better understanding of epilepsy, he said.
It costs about $2 million, and MIND has the only one of this type in the Southwest, Rasure said.
The institute also has the only magnetoencephalogram in the world for babies, known as the Baby Squid, which lets scientists study how the human brain develops, he said.
He said there are also many other imaging systems housed in the institute that allow researchers to look at the structure and chemistry of the mind in a way that is unique in the world.
"One thing about doing research on the brain - it costs a lot of money," Rasure said. "Many programs only do work on 50 subjects. We're collaborating with other projects to collect data on hundreds."
Looking into the minds of psychopaths and serial killers
Professor Kent Kiehl is taking neuroscience research behind bars in New Mexico's prison system.
Kiehl is the director of the Mobile Imaging Core, a $2.5 million mobile brain imaging device that is configured for research purposes.
He uses the device to scan the brains of some of the most dangerous psychopaths and serial killers in the state, he said.
The long-term goal of his research is to understand how their brains develop in order to prevent and cure criminal psychopathy and reduce violent crime, Kiehl said.
"We'd love to figure out what the different pathways are that lead to these disorders," he said. "If there are multiple ways that you get there, each of those would probably lead to different types of treatment."
Kiehl said he first became interested in violent criminal behavior because he grew up down the street from infamous serial killer
Ted Bundy.
He later worked in one of the oldest psychiatric wards in the United States and spent seven years doing clinical research in maximum security prison in Canada, he said.
He has interviewed about 400 violent criminals and sex offenders, including one who killed more than 40 people, Kiehl said.
"He actually ran his own little hit squad," he said. "He even called it Murder Inc., which is like from the '50s. He was just killing people for no reason."
New Mexico's prison population has nearly doubled in the last seven years, though many prisoners are not psychopaths, Kiehl said.
But he said there are hardly any grants to study psychopathic behavior, and psychopaths are often extremely dangerous.
He said the societal cost of crime in the United States in 2005 was $1.3 trillion, which includes the cost of policing, incarceration and other costs associated with crime.
That translates to about $4,500 per person per year for people of all ages, from birth to death, he said.
So, although Kiehl's research is not cheap, it's worth it in the long run, he said.
"If you use state-of-the-art techniques to treat criminals, you save money in the long run," he said. "Society likes to punish. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but if you're going to try to prevent violent offenders from continuing to do bad things, you need to set up facilities that treat them appropriately. That's what our research is striving towards."
