Category: Circuits
- A New Field of Neuroscience Aims to Map Connections in the Brain ()
Scientists working in connectomics are creating comprehensive maps of how neurons connect to one another Many of us have seen microscopic images of neurons in the brain — each neuron appearing as a glowing cell in a vast sea of blackness. This image is misleading: Neurons don’t exist in isolation. In the human brain, some […]
- A New Field of Neuroscience Aims to Map Connections in the Brain ()
Summary: Connectomics researchers aim to map and understand how individual neurons connect to each other to form functional networks. Source: Harvard Many of us have seen microscopic images of neurons in the brain—each neuron appearing as a glowing cell in a vast sea of blackness. This image is misleading: Neurons don’t exist in isolation. In […]
- Electrical Zaps Woke Up Dormant Neurons to Help Paralyzed People Walk Again ()
What was science fiction is now scientific reality: with a series of targeted electrical zaps to the spinal cord, nine paralyzed people immediately walked again with help from a robot. Five months later, half of the participants no longer needed those zaps to walk. Does the sentence sound a bit familiar? By themselves, the results—while […]
- Ready, Set…Go! Brain Circuit That Triggers the Execution of Planned Movement Discovered ()
Summary: Researchers have identified a neural circuit that helps suppress the execution of planned actions in response to specific cues. Source: Max Planck Florida Planned movement is essential to our daily lives, and it often requires delayed execution. As children, we stood crouched and ready but waited for the shout of “GO!” before sprinting from […]
- An expanding molecular toolbox untangles neural circuits ()
Life is full of nervous reactions — a head snaps towards a voice, leg muscles tense at the sound of a starting gun and thirsty mice scamper towards a squirt of water when trained to respond to a certain tone. The mechanisms behind such reward-related behaviours are notoriously difficult to unpick. Nerve cells often snake […]