Lab Notes Podcast | Why don’t we understand the brain?

Scientists have known for centuries that the brain is the seat of human thought, but we’re still in the dark about how it works. Lab Notes asked four neuroscientists to get into the weeds with us about why the brain is so complicated and hard to understand.

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Stories

How do our neurons connect?

A new study probes the details of human and mouse synapses, using the ‘multipatch’ technique to catalog more than 1700 connections between neurons in a publicly released dataset.

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A day in the (neuroscience) life

For Brain Awareness Week 2022, we dropped in on five Allen Institute teams working to understand the brain. Get a glimpse into the workdays of the Tissue Processing, the Electrophysiology team, the Human Cell Types team, the Electron Microscopy team, and the OpenScope team.

SciShots: Gentle imaging for delicate cells

Divide, thrive, repeat. The trillions of cells that make up our eyes, heart, bones, skin — our entire body — have all, at some point, divided from a stem cell through a process called mitosis. Allen Institute for Cell Science researchers are using a new technique known as lattice light sheet microscopy to gently spy on cells’ delicate structures as they go through the cell cycle.

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Video | Science in Sixty

The Science in Sixty video series explores the rich backgrounds, experiences and personal stories of Allen Institute scientists and other staff — all in 60 seconds. Our latest video features Luke Campagnola, a scientist with the Allen Institute for Brain Science.

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New Resources

Free Lesson Plan | Neurons: Beyond the textbook

Simularium Viewer

Events

In case you missed it: Event recordings

Missed one of our recent events? Recordings of many of our webinars, workshops and other events can be found on the Allen Institute YouTube channel. A few recent events have just been added:

►︎ 2022 Allen Frontiers Symposium

►︎ Understanding the Cellular Roots of Alzheimer’s Disease

►︎ The Virtual Science Lab: Does Organelle Shape Matter?

In the News

The neural dynamics of teamwork: New Allen Institute CEO on diversity and impact in life science

GeekWire, April 8, 2022