As CEO of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, Allan Jones leads an ambitious project to build an open, online, interactive atlas of the human brain.

Suzana Herculano-Houzel shrunk the human brain by 14 billion neurons -- by developing a new way to count them.

Dave Brain studies the plasma environments and atmospheres of unmagnetized planets.

Tali Sharot studies why our brains are biased toward optimism.

Paul Bloom explores some of the most puzzling aspects of human nature, including pleasure, religion, and morality.

Christopher deCharms is working on a way to use fMRI scans to show brain activity -- in real time.

Kim Gorgens studies the brain's response to injury -- and advocates that we mind our (gray) matter.

Using light and a little genetic engineering -- optogenetics -- Gero Miesenboeck has developed a way to control how living nerve cells work, and advanced understanding of how the brain controls behavior.

Michael Merzenich studies neuroplasticity -- the brain's powerful ability to change itself and adapt -- and ways we might make use of that plasticity to heal injured brains and enhance the skills in healthy ones.

Charles Limb is a doctor and a musician who researches the way musical creativity works in the brain.

Through his lab at the California Institute of Technology, David Anderson seeks to find the neural underpinnings of emotions like fear, anxiety and anger.

In his groundbreaking work, Xu Liu investigated how to activate and deactivate specific memories in mice.

Kwabena Boahen wants to understand how brains work -- and to build a computer that works like the brain by reverse-engineering the nervous system. His group at Stanford is developing Neurogrid, a hardware platform that will emulate the cortex’s inner workings.

Dan Reisel searches for the roots of human behavior, including the development of morality.

David Eagleman decodes the mysteries of the tangled web of neurons and electricity that make our minds tick -- and also make us human.

Ben Ambridge is the author of "Psy-Q," a sparkling book debunking what we think we know about psychology.

The chair of neurosurgery at the University of Toronto, Andres Lozano has pioneered the use of deep brain stimulation for treating Parkinson’s, depression, anorexia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Why do great thoughts and stories resonate so strongly with so many people, and how do we communicate them? Using fMRI experiments, Uri Hasson is looking for the answers.

Brain researcher Jill Bolte Taylor studied her own stroke as it happened -- and has become a powerful voice for brain recovery.

A neuroscientist and engineer, Daniel Wolpert studies how the brain controls the body.

Using fMRI imaging to watch the human brain at work, Nancy Kanwisher’s team has discovered cortical regions responsible for some surprisingly specific elements of cognition.

Siddharthan Chandran explores how to heal damage from degenerative disorders such as MS and motor neuron disease (ALS).

How can the "inner universe" of consciousness be explained in terms of mere biology and physics? Anil Seth explores the brain basis of consciousness and self.

Sebastian Seung is a leader in the new field of connectomics, currently the hottest space in neuroscience, which studies, in once-impossible detail, the wiring of the brain.

What does "normal behavior" look like? To find out, Read Montague is imaging thousands of brains at work.

Alix Generous is a college student and biology researcher with Asperger syndrome. She stresses the importance of building accepting environments for all kinds of minds.

Eleanor Longden overcame her diagnosis of schizophrenia to earn a master’s in psychology and demonstrate that the voices in her head were “a sane reaction to insane circumstances.”

Miguel Nicolelis explores the limits of the brain-machine interface.

Rajesh Rao seeks to understand the human brain through computational modeling, on two fronts: developing computer models of our minds, and using tech to decipher the 4,000-year-old lost script of the Indus Valley civilization.

Sandrine Thuret studies the way adult brains create new nerve cells in the hippocampus -- a brain area involved in memory and mood.