New research suggests that during decision-making, neurons in the brain are capable of much more complex processing than previously thought.

In a study published in eLIFE, researchers, including first author Aaron Kerlin, PhD, who is an assistant professor in the Department of Neuroscience and member of the Medical Discovery Team on Optical Imaging and Brain Science at the University of Minnesota Medical School, were the first to develop a microscope that rapidly images large stretches of the dendrite where neurons receive thousands of inputs from other neurons.

Dr. Kerlin conducted this research while at Janelia Research Campus and found that neighboring inputs to small sections of dendrite tended to represent similar information about upcoming actions.