Tracking Information Flow in the Brain

Technology Review -- By Jennifer Chu

"Scientists at MIT have engineered a nano-sized calcium sensor that may eventually shed light on the intricate cell-to-cell communications that make up human thought. Alan Jasanoff and his team at the Francis Bitter Magnet Lab and McGovern Institute of Brain Research have found that tracking calcium, a key messenger in the brain, may be a more precise way of measuring neural activity, compared with current imaging techniques, such as traditional functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Scientists at MIT have engineered a nano-sized calcium sensor that may eventually shed light on the intricate cell-to-cell communications that make up human thought. Alan Jasanoff and his team at the Francis Bitter Magnet Lab and McGovern Institute of Brain Research have found that tracking calcium, a key messenger in the brain, may be a more precise way of measuring neural activity, compared with current imaging techniques, such as traditional functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).