A better look at the brain
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 - 10:30
in Biology & Nature
The challenge of Dr. Mark Ellisman's life is understanding how the brain works. He wants to know how the interplay of structural, chemical, and electrical signals in and between cells of nervous tissue gives rise to behavior. To meet this challenge, he and his colleagues at the University of California, San Diego, develop methods to understand the entire brain, studying it from the whole atoms up to the whole structure. An innovative tool they've built is the Whole Brain Catalog, which is similar to Google Earth, allowing scientists to see the details and the bigger view.