GERMAN SCIENCE WEEKLY HIGHLIGHT - 9

What's amazing to many people is that their brain -- this sort of bumpy lump of pink stuff -- somehow produces their thoughts. With most technologies, you can see at least some connection between their appearance and their functions; a rocket looks like it could shoot off into space, a teapot appears to be a lovely thing to warm up tea in. But a brain, well a brain -- if you showed one to an alien who'd never seen a brain before, that alien might never guess: a brain is a thing that thinks.

Inside that pink stuff is something a little bit like a computer. It has "wires" which transmit electricity, and create logical patterns (you might wonder whether your little sister has logical patterns in her head, but actually, compared to something without a brain like, for example, a pile of mud, even your little sister is logical). But these "wires" don't look like the wires on telephone poles. Rather, they are things with names like "axons" and "neurons", and you can't see them, no matter how hard you stare at the pink stuff.

But scientist at the Max-Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, Germany, have found a new way to look at the wires in your brain. And the picture on the right shows you a little bit of what they saw. Click on the picture to magnify it. And click on the link below, and Dr. Winfried Denk will tell you more about that picture, and how that pink stuff you see makes the special thoughts you think.