Amazing Video of a Brain Perceiving the External World

redletterdave points out work from Japanese researchers who produced an incredible visualization of how a brain perceives its environment. Studying zebrafish larvae, the scientists were able to observe neuronal signals in real time as the zebrafish saw and identified is prey, a paramecium. The results are illustrated in a brief video posted to YouTube, and in a longer video abstract hosted at Current Biology. (Direct download). The work is important because it demonstrates direct mapping of external stimuli to internal neuron activity in the optic tectum.

Comments

Brain cells

[buchner.johannes]

Here is a video of a researcher that sliced the brain so you can see the individual neurons, and trace their connections (~1000 connections per neuron). He flies through those connections in the recovered mapping.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNyDSx14yIQ

W. Grey Walter's "Toposcope"

[dpbsmith]

This is reminiscent of the "toposcope," built In the 1940s by late W. Grey Walter. It was a 22-channel EEG, or perhaps one should say EES for electroencephaloscope, which displayed a map of the brain's electrical activity in real time... if I recall correctly, on 22 "magic eye" tubes, allowing the special propagation of brain waves to be visualized.