May 06

Dissecting circuits: Bridging the gap from circuits to behavior

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Chalasani S.H., Chronis N., Tsunozaki M., Gray J.M., Ramot D., Goodman M.B. & Bargmann C.I. (2007). Dissecting a circuit for olfactory behaviour in Caenorhabditis elegans, Nature, 450 (7166) 63-70. DOI: 10.1038/nature06292

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April 29

Functional Compartmentalization and Viewpoint Generalization Within the Macaque Face-Processing System

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One thing humans, and in fact all primates can do with remarkable ease compared to computers is face recognition, especially across a range of viewing conditions.  At her lab at Caltech, Doris Tsao tries to explore the way the brain does this.  In her recent Science paper, she explored view invariance in the recently discovered […]

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April 15

Vision is complex: Predicting responses despite non-linearity and heterogeneity

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What does it mean to understand vision?  Can we know how the retina will react when we see our favorite painting or our best friend before it even happens?  The work of Dr. Fred Rieke hopes to do just that.  Not unsurprisingly, vision is complex and studying it is hard.  The output neurons of the […]

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April 07

Wave makers: The origins of corticothalamic slow oscillations

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It might come as a surprise that while you’re asleep or at rest your neurons do not enjoy a similar period of tranquil inactivity, but instead remain hard at work. In fact, previous studies report that coordinated waves of slow oscillatory activity (< 1 Hz) spread through the cortex and thalamus during sleep, waking rest […]

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March 30

Arthropods: More than just a pretty face, they have brains that can preserve for over half a billion years

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Behold the Arthropods. They are invertebrates with exoskeletons, segmented bodies and jointed appendages (examples: insects, arachnids, crustaceans). Exquisitely versatile and adaptable, they comprise the most species-rich phylum and they’ve been around since at least the early Cambrian Period (541-485.4 million years ago, (Mya)). Look where you’re standing. Chances are that an athropod’s already been there […]

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Launching our new “Spikes in the Classroom” outreach module

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We are incredibly excited to announce the addition of a new module to our outreach efforts. When we go into a classroom, we bring plenty of dead brains… rare jarred brains of porpoises and penguins for our “Comparative Anatomy” module and squishy sheep’s brains that students get to touch and hold and inspect (always with […]

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Carla Shatz: An Inspiration for Women in Neuroscience

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Dr. Carla Shatz is a woman of many firsts. She began her career in neuroscience as the first undergraduate student of Drs. David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel of Harvard Medical School (yes, that Hubel and Wiesel who won the Nobel Prize for their work on the visual system in 1981).  After graduating from Radcliffe College […]

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Primate Visual Space: The Entorhinal Frontier

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Throughout the course of human history, great metaphorical emphasis has been placed on developing an understanding of our “place in the world.”  Although this proverbial construct refers more to a sense of self-efficacy, it underscores the inarguable importance of determining our position as it relates to the environment around us in producing proper behavior.  Research into the neural mechanisms […]

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A brave foray into the daunting complexity of the human cortex

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Understanding the organization of human cortex has proven to be more difficult than examining that of other animals. For instance, we are more limited in the methods we can use to investigate human cortical networks. Brodmann attempted to classify and name human cerebral cortex by studying the cytoarchitecture of post-mortem brains; his legacy was a […]

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Remembering Value: How primates can keep track of the values of many items over the long term

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We humans would often prefer not to spend hours deliberating over simple choices, such as what to eat for breakfast or what show to watch in the evening. Neither do we often make choices in food or activity by random guessing. Instead, we typically tend to order food from a restaurant based on what we […]

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