Research roundup: Precision therapy, fly ash concrete and cellular origami

Stanford scientists spent the summer investigating everything from how therapy changes the brain to what causes cells to fold themselves. Learn about their findings in this week’s Research Roundup.

Precise cognitive behavioral therapy provides an individualized way to fight depression

Stanford scientists conducted a study showing cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can change the neural circuitry of the brain, indicating that patients respond neurologically to therapy. Moreover, brain scans can be used to measure how much they respond, which can predict how successful the therapy can be in the long run.

The study used a specific type of CBT called problem-solving therapy, focused on improving patients’ planning and troubleshooting skills. To make it less abstract, patients receiving problem-solving therapy were encouraged to think of problems in everyday situations, such as conflicts with roommates.

Why change the brain’s neural circuitry long term? Research from Leanne Williams, professor of psychiatry and the director of the Stanford Center for Precision Mental Health, previously identified several biotypes of depression that affect what’s called the cognitive control circuit in the brain — a set of neurons responsible for the executive functioning skills that CBT in this study was aimed at improving.

“We wanted to see whether this problem-solving therapy in particular could modulate the cognitive control circuit,” postdoctoral scholar and lead author of the study Xue Zhang told Stanford Medicine.

Study participants underwent this therapy for a year and received periodic fMRI brain scans, which included a task to engage the cognitive control circuit. Of the patients in the study, 32% responded neurologically to the therapy compared to 17% for antidepressants.

Of course, a single therapy won’t work for everyone, but this work is likely to help clinicians better develop more personalized treatments for patients with depression.

New type of concrete kills two birds with one stone

A child in a developing country plays on a floor, then swiftly develops an infectious disease despite taking the necessary precautions, like washing their hands. What could have caused it?

In low-income households in developing countries, soil-packed floors can easily cause intestinal diseases — for example, when children touch the floor, then their mouths, resulting in them ingesting harmful bacteria.

While concrete floors can more easily be cleaned, the production of concrete releases a large amount of carbon dioxide — a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. So Stanford Medicine researchers are building a new kind of concrete mix with a lower carbon footprint.

In addition to the cement, water, gravel and sand that constitutes nearly all concrete, researchers have experimented with adding recycled fly ash — a material containing heavy metals that are nonreactive with cement — helping concrete retain its physical properties while lowering its carbon footprint. 

To put this unusual ingredient to the test, researchers inoculated these fly ash-infused slabs with parasites like E. coli. They found that the parasites on the fly ash slabs had survival rates that paralleled the parasites on normal concrete, indicating that researchers had found a similarly effective, but lower-carbon alternative to concrete.

“This project could really be a model for how to do public health with sustainability baked in at the beginning,” said Jade Benjamin-Chung, assistant professor of epidemiology and population health at the Stanford School of Medicine. 

Origami meets science

In a paper published in “Science,” bioengineering professor Manu Prakash and Ph.D. candidate Eliott Flaum explore the idea of cells folding themselves into unique shapes in a process that mimics origami.

Prakash and Flaum studied the free living unicellular protist Lacrymaria olor. They observed L. olor fold itself into unique shapes, despite the fact that the protist does not have a nervous system.

Upon further research, Prakash and Flaum found the potential driver of this strange behavior: microtubules in the cell membrane of protists like L. olor coil and uncoil, producing various projections that extend up to at least 1,500 microns. 

Examining how cells like L. olor exhibit change their own shape through origami-like behavior can help researchers better understand cellular function in the future.

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