Illustration by Jeremy Leung, Published 14:37, May. 19, 2021
In the ’90s, when he was a doctoral student at the University of Lausanne, in Switzerland, neuroscientist Sean Hill spent five years studying how cat brains respond to noise. At the time, researchers knew that two regions the cerebral cortex, which is the outer layer of the brain, and the thalamus, a nut-like structure near the centre did most of the work. But, when an auditory signal entered the brain through the ear, what happened, specifically? Which parts of the cortex and thalamus did the signal travel to? And in what order? The answers to such questions could help doctors treat hearing loss in humans. So, to learn more, Hill, along with his supervisor and a group of lab techs, anaesthetized cats and inserted electrodes into their brains to monitor what happened when the animals were exposed to sounds, which were piped into their ears via miniature headphones. Hill’s probe then captured the brain signals th
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February 4, 2021 at 8:00 am
In the late 1800s, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, a Spanish brain scientist, spent long hours in his attic drawing elaborate cells. His careful, solitary work helped reveal individual cells of the brain that together create wider networks. For those insights, Cajal received a Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine in 1906.
Now, a group of embroiderers has traced those iconic cell images with thread, paying tribute to the pioneering drawings that helped us see the brain clearly.
The Cajal Embroidery Project was launched in March of 2020 by scientists at the University of Edinburgh. Over a hundred volunteers scientists, artists and embroiderers sewed panels that will ultimately be stitched into a tapestry, a project described in the December