If your eyes are the window to your soul, what’s the window to your brain?
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Many people suffer from diseases that require brain surgery to treat and monitor. Unfortunately, brain surgery requires an open skull – risky and complex! Even worse, people suffering from disease in their brain sometimes require multiple brain surgeries.
Guillermo Aguillar and his team from the University of California, Riverside, are trying ease their pain. How? By developing a window to the brain.
The researchers removed part of a mouse skull and replaced it with a transparent window made of a ceramic-based material. This allowed scientists to access the brain tissue with lasers! These lasers penetrate the window and can be used to kill bacteria and target areas of the brain without additional surgery.
This technique sheds new light on hidden corners of our brain – and could lead to more laser-based methods to treat disease.
After all, it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to know — anything that keeps power tools away from your skull is a GOOD thing!