Bluesky

Facebook

Illustration: Ollie Hirst

It is a dogma in neuroscience that certain brain cells respond in the same way to the same thing. Specific neurons always fire, for example, when we see particular shapes and colours; other neurons activate to swing an arm or wiggle a nose. The brain needs this stability, the theory goes, to respond to the outside world in a consistent way.

So, when neuroscientist Laura Driscoll began her doctoral research at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2012, her first task was to establish this baseline by tracking the activity of individual mouse neurons over time.

Brains of ‘super agers’ are strong producers of new neurons

The brain’s code seems to be in constant flux. Neuroscientists are baffled