Considering both good and bad is fundamental for future planning and decision-making. When animals forage, they may consider how tasty the food is, how much food is available…
As neurons develop in the central nervous system, they encounter many potential synaptic partners, and choose among them to form stable connections with only a few. The specific…
Many of the approved chemotherapy drugs are either collected from natural sources or inspired by molecules existing in nature. Natural products with anticancer activity can be readily identified…
An exciting aspect of neuroscience is the ability to peek into the brain, measuring the activity of neurons in behaving animals. Electrophysiology allows us to listen to the…
How good are we at detecting a specific smell in a mixture of smells – for example, the fragrance of a stargazer lily in a large bouquet of…
When we think of the chemical elements of life, the “big four” of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen leap to mind, and rightly so, as they make up…
The complex circuits of the brain are built from thousands of types of neurons. More than a century ago, Santiago Ramon y Cajal founded what we now call…
During brain development, neurons connect with each other using branched projections called dendrites. As a dendrite extends away from its neuron’s cell body to connect with dendrites from…
Neurons connect with each other to form complex circuits that underlie mental activities. Mapping these connections to obtain a so-called wiring diagram is an essential step in learning…
(l to r) David Pincus, Eric Solís, Vlad Denic No matter where you fall on the spectrum of libertarianism this election year, you can hopefully appreciate that the…
