Visualizing the Most Basic of Decisions

Add some fluorescent proteins to a neuron taken from the hippocampus, put it on a glass plate and film it for one hour.  According to the researcher who took this image (Andrew Moore): “this cell is in the middle of deciding which of its neurites (a general term for the long extensions from the cell body) will become dendrites and which will become the axon.”

Just think hard while looking at this picture, and this process is probably happening inside you right now!

Thanks to Scientific American for bringing this cool item to my attention!