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.
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.
Brain researcher Jill Bolte Taylor studied her own stroke as it happened -- and has become a powerful voice for how we can choose to replace our stress, fear and anxiety with feelings of joy and deep inner peace.
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.
Through his lab at the California Institute of Technology, David Anderson seeks to find the neural underpinnings of emotions like fear, anxiety and anger.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.