Colorful and Cerebral

This tangled forest is a false color representation of the cells that make you who you are: neurons. Brain cells communicate in complex networks, but researchers are getting better and better and unraveling their signals. Reporting Dec. 12 in the journal Neuron, Norwegian and German scientists say theyve used a supercomputer to better understand how the babble of thousands of nerve cells talking to one another translates when recorded onto an electrode of the sort used for electroencephalograms (EEGs). This translation effort should make it easier to design brain implants that help control epilepsy, or even enable a paralyzed patient to move his or her limbs with brain waves, the researchers said.