Scientists at Stanford University have developed a new way of looking at the brain – they make the brain tissue almost transparent. A series of chemical treatments replaces the fatty lipid membranes which surrounds cells with an acrylamide mesh. This mesh is see-through, and leaves the microscopic details intact.
Before this new development, neuroscientists had to cut a brain into ultr-thin slices in an attempt to visualise such features. But this method cuts the cable-like axons which carry signals from one part of the brain to another, which is not idealio.
