science

For most of the history of neuroscience, glial cells were the forgotten majority. Your brain contains roughly 86 billion neurons. It also contains roughly the same number of glial cells—maybe more. That's half your brain, by cell count, that isn't neurons. And for over a

In 2005, Karl Deisseroth's lab at Stanford did something that sounded impossible. They took a gene from algae—a gene that codes for a light-sensitive protein—and inserted it into mammalian neurons. When they shone blue light on those neurons, they fired. When they turned off the light,

In 1986, scientists published the complete wiring diagram of a brain. It was the brain of a roundworm called Caenorhabditis elegans—302 neurons, about 7,000 synaptic connections. It took over a decade of painstaking work, slicing the worm into thousands of thin sections, imaging each one with electron microscopy,

"Scientists discover the brain region for love." "This is your brain on meditation—and it's incredible." "Neuroscience proves free will is an illusion." You've seen these headlines. They show up every week, accompanied by colorful brain scans with blobs lighting