Two AAAS members – one of them a AAAS fellow – were awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Using exquisitely precise methods to measure how memories are embedded in brain cells in mice, scientists have shown how fear-based memories prompted by the sound associated with an electric shock can be activated and erased.

Novel imaging techniques are making it possible to study the brain while it’s at work. These new, non-invasive tools – representing significant advances related to positron emission tomography (PET), 3-D microscopy and the use of magnetic fields and nanoparticles to remotely control targeted cells – permit the real-time study of neural activity in unprecedented detail.