To avoid injury, most organisms react reflexively to the approach of incoming objects. For instance, humans will, without thinking, dodge an oncoming car or bat away a small…
Brains process external information rapidly at a sub-second time scale, which is set by the dynamic electrophysiological properties of neurons and the fast communication within neuronal populations. This…
(l to r) Alex Schier, Martin Haesemeyer and Florian Engert As we explore our environment we constantly experience new sensations – changes in the visual scene, different sounds…
The surface of the human brain has many folds (is gyrified), quite unlike the smooth surface of the mouse brain. This gyrification correlates with the increase in size…
Niels Bradshaw (l) and Rich Losick An important question in biology is how genetically identical cells activate different sets of genes. This is particularly perplexing for cells that…
John M. Nicoludis (l) and Rachelle Gaudet As the brain develops, neurons play a complicated game of Twister: they have to keep their neuronal processes from getting tangled…
The holy grail for neuroscientists is to understand how the symphony of activity in our 100 billion neurons acts to control our thoughts and actions. The NIH BRAIN…
Imagine you are a child hoping to get a teddy bear from your parents as a birthday gift. What if they gave you a box of candies instead?…
(l to r) Nao Uchida, Sachie K Ogawa, William Menegas, Mitsuko Watabe-Uchida and Yoh Isogai Dopamine, originally referred to as a pleasure molecule, is now one of the…
Nao Uchida (l) and Neir Eshel Say you’re at a supermarket, staring at two cartons of ice cream: chocolate and caramel. Before making your choice, you try to…
