Hillman, a biomedical engineer at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute, is inventing new kinds of microscopes that create 3D movies of life in action. Her microscopes are helping researchers see the brain in a whole new light.
The Columbia-led discovery in mice aids efforts to map the circuitry of the brain’s learning center and stands to inform studies of psychiatric disorders in which this circuitry goes awry.
In a scientific first, Columbia neuroengineers have created a system that translates thought into intelligible, recognizable speech, a critical step toward brain-computer interfaces that hold immense promise for those with limited or no ability to speak.
Armed with advanced genomic tools, Columbia scientists have uncovered an ingenious mechanism that underlies the brain’s ability to distinguish different smells.
The scientists identified a group of genes in roundworms that control the onset of puberty and induce sex differences in neural structures, raising questions of whether differences in male and female behavior are hardwired in our brains.