A Brain Scientist and Volcanologist Investigate Why Some Volcanoes Turn Explosive

Imaging the Living Brain

Elizabeth Hillman leads a team that is developing new imaging methods for the living brain. Their goal is to understand the way that the brain functions and regulates its blood flow, which can provide important clues to understanding early brain development, disease and aging.

Flywalker

Developed by Richard Mann, Flywalker is a combination apparatus and software program that pays close attention to an insect’s steps. The insect strolls over a piece of glass in the device. At the same time, light beamed into the glass bends — much in the same way that light shimmers in a swimming pool — resulting in bursts of light where the fly touches the glass. A video camera captures those bursts and then feeds them into software that reconstructs the fly’s movements, step by step.

The Restless Brain: New Study Uncovers Vivid Patterns of Neural Activity in the Resting Mouse Brain

Columbia scientists have traced the origins of mysterious signals in the brain that have captivated the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) community for the last decade. Using a recently developed imaging technique in mice, the Columbia team revealed synchronized, network-like neural activity coursing around the brain, even when the mouse was ‘at rest.’