SCIENCE OF THE BRAIN - A Bug's Mind, What They Tell About Us

"How studying fruit flies and zebrafish might unlock secrets of the human brain" PBS NewsHour 7/23/2014

Excerpt

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  Next, trying to better understand what’s happening in the brain of a fruit fly, a dragonfly, or a zebra fish, all part of a larger puzzle to learn more about how our own brains work.

NewsHour science correspondent Miles O’Brien has the first in our three-part series on the science of the brain.

MILES O’BRIEN (NewsHour):  Oh, to be a fly on the wall at the Basic Research Facility scientist consider nirvana.  You might see a Nobel Prize in the making or you might be subjected to this, the fruit fly version of a scary movie, the rapidly growing shadow of a predator homing in for the kill.

GWYNETH CARD, Howard Hughes Medical Institute-Janelia Farm Research Campus:  My lab is really interested in how flies make decisions.

MILES O’BRIEN:  Neuroscientist Gwyneth Card runs a laboratory at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute-Janelia Farm Research Campus near Washington, D.C.  She films fruit flies at 6,000 frames per second to better see what they do and eventually she hopes understand how their brains issue commands and their bodies turn that into lifesaving action.

Talk about ecofriendly campus:

Howard Hughes Medical Institute-Janelia Farm Research Campus