Anne-Laure Le Cunff

In French, “cultiver son jardin intérieur” means to tend to your internal garden—to take care of your mind. The garden metaphor is particularly apt: taking care of your mind involves cultivating your curiosity (the seeds), growing your knowledge (the trees), and producing new thoughts (the fruits).

Due to the random nature in the expression of these genes, researchers are currently unable to precisely control the labeling process, which makes it very hard to identify specific neurons. They get a good idea of what the circuit looks like, but not exactly which class of cells each neuron belongs to.

Recent years have seen a huge growth in the public awareness of neuroscience. People have become more interested in new findings about the brain, and also find brain-based explanations quite compelling. This public interest has led enterprising individuals to try to apply neuroscientific ideas to more everyday situations.

While thinking in maps may first bring to mind the idea of cartography, a map does not need to be geographic—it can be any symbolic depiction of the relationship between elements of some physical or mental space, such as themes, objects, or areas.