Big Bang and Rewards

Photo credit: Frederic Brischoux/Mark Ungless
MRC Clinical Sciences Centre
UK
www.csc.mrc.ac.uk

The nerve cells pictured play an important role in our interactions with food, money and addictive drugs. Activated by unexpected rewards, they make a chemical called dopamine, which is believed to affect memory formation in the brain. These neurons (pictured in rat brain) die off during Parkinson’s disease. Schizophrenia and manic depression often involve a dopamine disorder, which can reduce our ability to remember, pay attention and solve problems.

Photo credit: Carlos Frenk
Ogden Centre, Durham University
UK
ogdencentre.dur.ac.uk

How did the Universe come to look the way it does today? The Millenium simulation (pictured) uses maths to model the evolution of the Universe. The model predicts how changes in dark matter gave rise to galaxies, each one composed of stars and planets. The bright streaks shown represent the vast filaments that ramify the Universe, each made up from clusters and superclusters of thousands of galaxies containing many billions of stars.