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Reductionist biology--examining individual brain parts, neural circuits and molecules--has brought us a long way, but it alone cannot explain the workings of the human brain, an information processor within our skull that is perhaps unparalleled anywhere in the universe. We must construct as well as reduce and build as well as dissect. To do that, we need a new paradigm that combines both analysis and synthesis.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Ever since scientists began studying the brain, they’ve wanted to get a better look at what was going on. Researchers have poked and prodded and looked at dead cells under electron microscopes, but never before have they been able to get high resolution microscopic views of actual living brain cells as they function inside of a living animal. Now, thanks to work by physicist Stefan Hell and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, that dream is realized.

Glowing genes: White arrows show hot spots of ADAR activation; courtesy of Reenan Lab/Brown University It’s a long way from gene to protein. The dogmatic scenario is: DNA gets transcribed into RNA, which gets translated into protein . But in real life, and in real living things, the workings aren’t quite that simple.

Recently developed powerful, yet also delicate and refined, genetic tools can inva

Researchers have come a step closer to gaining complete control over a mind, even if that mind is smaller than a grain of sand. A team at Harvard University has built a computerized system to manipulate worms--making them start and stop, giving them the sensation of being touched, and even prompting them to lay eggs--