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Migraine Research
Introduction
A migraine is a condition that is characterized by severe headaches, and nausea. Migraines affect 12–28% of people at some point in their lives. It is about 3 times more common in women than in men. Severe episodes can last as long as three days. This causes the condition to have a very disruptive effect on the lives of sufferers. During an attack, the person is unable to carry out any of the activities of daily life.
A migraine attack can be regarded as a tipping point in the brain: activity in the brain spins out of control, causing a cortical spreading depression (CSD). A CSD is characterized by a self-propagating wave of cellular depolarization in the brain.
The spinoza-migraine project
In 2009, three professors won the prestigious NWO Spinoza price and decided to team-up in a collaborative project to study the underlying mechanisms of a migraine attack. Within this project, BIOS has the task to develop new measurement tools to study migraine attacks in the brain. One of these tools we want to design, is a miniaturized dialysis probe to measure various compounds directly from the brain of mice that have the migraine gene.
Matter size does matter!
The figure on the right indicates the size of a mouse brain, compared to the size of e.g. the human brain. Commercially available dialysis probes have a typical diameter of 0.3mm. The brain of a mouse has a diameter of around 5mm. Insertion of these commercial probes causes a lot of damage, possibly triggering migraine attacks even before the measurement is started. Therefore, smaller dialysis probes are required for this project. Miniaturization also put demands on the interface with the outside world like fluidic connections, transport of analyte, and detection limits of various measurement equipment.
Goals of this assignment
Your goal in this assignment is to design the required miniaturized dialysis probe. Next, the probe needs to be fabricated with the assistance of our (cleanroom) technicians. The resulting probe can be tested under controlled conditions in our lab. Finally, the probe can be tested under real conditions in the lab of our project partners in Leiden (if time allows).
Please feel free to get in contact if you have any questions or if you are interested in (parts of) this assignment.
Contact
Mathieu Odijk
Kamer: Ca 2413
Tel.: 4782
E-mail: m.odijk@utwente.nl
