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Watching the nervous system being wired in real time

Thanks to a new imaging technology developed at Yale, the National Institutes of Health and Sloan-Kettering, scientists can now see for the first time the development of a living organism at the level of a single cell.

By Bill Hathaway

5 Dec 2011

One of the developers, Yale cell biologist Daniel Colon-Ramos, illustrates the power of the new technology in this video that shows the migration of cells that will form the nervous system in a developing worm.

The ability to track these developing networks through time will give scientists the ability to create a neurodevelopmental atlas - a tool that will aid the investigation of a host of new diseases.