If i read on wikipedia about ion-canals and gaba receptors and how they open and close and work in the brain and what happens, if they malfunction … how do they find that out?
Those are just 2 of many different names / terms … but afaik it is not possible to watch the brain working that deep … so what do they do, to determine that?
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For the brain, a lot has been found out over the years when people have accidents/injuries. One person gets shot in the head and survives, but is now missing a chunk of their brain. They’re perfectly fine except now they can’t read. A second person has a stroke affecting that same area and they can’t read either. Therefore, that section likely involves reading.
Scientists will also ask a person to do a task while running a brain scan. Portions will light up in the scan, showing what sections of their brain are in use.
Things like ion channels, GABA receptors, etc. are all proteins. Figuring out how proteins work typically involve determining their 3D structure and figuring out what parts interact with other chemicals. This type of work is done via biochemical lab techniques, and not doing brain imagery.
When it comes to figuring out how they go wrong at the cellular level, it is helpful to know a little bit of basic biochemistry. Proteins are chains of chemicals called amino acids. The specific sequence of amino acids in any given protein is determined by your DNA. Thus, any changes in DNA can subsequently change the sequence of the amino acids, altering the way that the protein works. So, to determine what damage these DNA changes cause, you can look at cell cultures with and without these changes and see what is going wrong.
There are lots of different techniques. For example, in the brain if you want to find out which areas connect to others you can use things called tracers. Basically, you inject the tracer into one part of the brain and it will highlight all the different connections it has with other parts of the brain.
If you want to figure out which parts of the brain are involved in different functions, you can destroy one part and test what impact this has on an animal’s ability to perform certain tasks. For example, you could destroy part of the memory centre (hippocampus) and see how well an animal is able to remember how to perform a learned task or learning a new task.
For more molecular/cellular stuff, you can directly measure protein levels or see whether they live by using fluorescent proteins that attach to the proteins you want to measure. Then you measure the amount of fluorescence.
These are just three examples of commonly used techniques. There are thousands of others. Each has their own advantages and limitations.
Brain cells such as neurons have an electrical charge during rest. When gaba or whatever comes along and binds to the gaba receptor, it opens up an ion channel and changes the charge in the neuron. This change can be detected with electrodes or wires that are near or attached to the brain cells. When something goes wrong with these ion channels, it will show up in the signal, kind of like an EKG.
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