MIT scientists have developed a new brain “atlas” and computer model that sheds insight into the brain-body connections in C. elegans worms, reports Lauren Leffer for Scientific American. “Through establishing those brain-behavior links in a humble roundworm,” writes Leffer, “neuroscientists are one step closer to understanding how all sorts of animal brains, even potentially human ones, encode action.”
In an article for The New York Times exploring whether humans are the only species able to comprehend geometry, Siobhan Roberts spotlights Prof. Josh Tenenbaum’s approach to exploring how humans can extract so much information from minimal data, time, and energy. “Instead of being inspired by simple mathematical ideas of what a neuron does, it’s inspired by simple mathematical ideas of what thinking is,” says Tenenbaum.
Research published in Neuron may allow for the development of new treatments for disorders associated with memory loss. “It’s possible that further research on the dentate gyrus-CA3 pathway could lead to ways to restore the synapses to allow memory formation again,” Prof. Yingzi Lin told Elise Takahama for the Boston Globe.
Rachel Zimmerman of WBUR reports on how neuroscientists have located a neural pathway that could transform how dyslexia is addressed. “In preliminary findings, researchers report that brain measures taken in kindergartners — even before the kids can read — can “significantly” improve predictions of how well, or poorly, the children can master reading later on,” Zimmerman reports.
NPR’s Joe Palca reports on EyeWire, a computer game developed by MIT researchers to help map nerve connections in the eye. Palca reports that over “120,000 citizen neuroscientists from 140 countries” played the game, helping to produce a map that shows that the eye’s retina detects motion.
“With the help of volunteers who played an online brain-mapping game, researchers showed that pairs of neurons positioned along a given direction together cause a third neuron to fire in response to images moving in the same direction,” writes Mo Costandi in an article for Nature about how MIT researchers have mapped neuron connections in the brain.
In a piece for The Guardian, Mo Costandi reports on how MIT researchers have mapped neural connections in the retina. “A large group of gamers, working with computational neuroscientists, has produced a wiring diagram of the nerve cell connections at the back of the eye, which may have solved the long-standing question of how cells in the retina detect motion,” Costandi writes.
Boston Globe reporter Carolyn Johnson writes about how MIT researchers have mapped a neural circuit in the eye that helps detect movement. The researchers developed the map through EyeWire, a citizen science game developed at MIT that has users trace the path of neurons in the brain.