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Carl Schoonover is a neuroscience Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University and author of Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century (Abrams, 2010). Author Bio Text until an ‘end nested style character’ (Command+3) xxxx xxxx xx xxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxx xx xxxxxxxxxx xxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx. I M AG I N G SIGNALS IN A STORM A new computer imaging technique shows researchers how brain cells communicate—one molecule at a time By Carl Schoonover The computer-generated image here, created by Tom Bartol of the Salk Institute for Biologyourself small enough to discern individual ical Studies and his colleagues, is a start. It repmolecules, the far right of this image is what you resents a small portion of a three-dimensional might see when one brain cell communicates reconstruction, four years in the making, of a miwith another across a synapse—the point of nuscule cube of nervous tissue in a rat brain. contact between two nerve cells. How the brain Aside from showing structure, it captures a sinsenses, thinks, learns and emotes depends on gle dispatch, at the right, from one neuron to how all its nerve cells, or neurons, communicate another. Individual molecules of the chemical with one another. And as a result, many laboraneurotransmitter (yellow) explode out of the tories are working feverishly to understand how synapse formed at the point of contact between synapses function—and how psychiatric drugs, an axon (gray) extending from the signaling cell which target them, improve patients’ lives. and a dendrite (blue) on the receiver. (The blueYet neuroscientists are hobbled by the fact green structure is a nonneuronal cell that aids that synapses are extremely complex, vanishneurons in their normal function.) ingly small and extraordinarily fast. Thanks to One important observation made possible the coordinated efforts of over 1,400 types of by Bartol’s simulation is that fully one fifth of molecules, one neuron communicates with anthe volume in this region of the brain is nothing other by spitting out chemical neurotransmitbut the space between neighboring cells— ters that carry its message across a thin gap to space through which neurotransmitters can apa receptive surface on its partner. The only way parently spread fairly widely. This broad diffuto provide a full account of what goes on at the sion contradicts the standard picture of the synapse is to build a computer model that is as synapse as a site of communication realistic as possible. The hope is that between only two neurons and could running a moment-by-moment, molVIEW A SLIDE SHOW ecule-by-molecule simulation will AND FURTHER READING potentially alter our understanding ScientificAmerican.com/ of how information spreads through yield novel insights that could then mar2011/brain the brain. be tested experimentally. 46 Scientifi ScientificcAmerican, American,March March 2011 2011 sad0311Scho4p.indd 46 IMAGE GENERATED BY TOM BARTOL Salk Institute for Biological Studies IN COLLABORATION WITH JUSTIN KINNEY, DAN KELLER, CHANDRA BAJAJ, MARY KENNEDY, JOEL STILES, KRISTEN HARRIS AND TERRY SEJNOWSKI IF YOU COULD PAUSE TIME FOR AN INSTANT AND MAKE Photograph/Illustration by Artist Name 1/13/11 5:27:47 PM Author Bio Text until an ‘end nested style character’ (Command+3) xxxx xxxx xx xxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxx xx xxxxxxxxxx xxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx. Photograph/Illustration by Artist Name sad0311Scho4p.indd 47 March Month2011, 20xx,ScientificAmerican.com Scientific American.com 47 1/13/11 5:27:55 PM