Broken brains and network structures

Sometimes a disease is the handiwork of a clear culprit: the invasion of a bacterium, or the mutation of a gene. Conventionally, scientists have assumed the same for neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease, and zoom in on the brain to look for potential localized causes, such as particular molecules or genes. For example, they've found that the brains of Alzheimer's patients contain proteins that have folded in the wrong way.

However, it's difficult to assign blame to one specific part in the brain for causing a neurological disease. "It would be like saying that a building fell down because there was something wrong with a single brick, instead of some kind of structural problem," says SFI President David Krakauer. The brain functions as an integrated network of parts rather than a discrete machine with one specific task like the kidney. It's limiting to study parts of a diseased brain in isolation.

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