The brain is the most complex organ in the human body, but for years, available technology greatly limited scientists’ interpretation of how the billions of neurons act in concert to create complex behaviors. Recent advances in neuronal recording technology, however, along with the invention of the Pentium processor–based computer capable of digitizing the data at a much higher rate than ever before, have enabled brain research to progress at an increasingly rapid pace.
In 2007, neuroscientist Earl Miller of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his postdoc Timothy Buschman pushed the evolving technology to a new level with rhesus macaques. By implanting up to 50 electrodes, which recorded activity from neurons in three different brain regions simultaneously, the study (this month’s Hot Paper) was one of the first to compare entire populations of neurons from multiple areas of the primate brain. As the monkeys performed different visual search tasks, the ...
