Alison Barth and team from CMU developed a strain of transgenic mice with glowing neurons so they can monitor the neural activity of cells and synapses for their research in perception, behavior, and learning. dying neurons and cells with fluorescent dye is common (like the photo above) but it doesn't show the activity of the neurons as they fire. this seems to do the trick. she recently received a $1.125M award from NIH for this project. [via]