Congrats to Rockefellers Cori Bargmann on the 2015 Benjamin Franklin Medal! On the other end of the brain spectrum is the research of Bargmann, a neuroscientist at Rockefeller University in New York. She studies the brain and behavior of Caenorhabditis elegans, a type of roundworm with just 302 neurons, compared with tens of billions in humans. Despite its small size, or perhaps because of it, this common lab animal is a powerful tool for understanding broader truths about the brain and behavior. Bargmann and her colleagues are able to track the flow of electrochemical traffic in every single one of the worms nerve cells and explore how it relates to the animals behavior - an impossible task for the human brain. Among her findings are that worms have innate, hardwired preferences for odors of certain beneficial substances and aversions to odors of other substances that are toxic. Later research has found similar traits in mammals; for example, humans evolved a dislike of bitter tastes because they are associated with some poisonous plants.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 19:09:53 +0000
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