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Perhaps the world leader in fruit fly (drosophila) research, The Dickinson Lab at California Institute of Technology is located in Pasadena, California. Despite its small scale — about the size of a poppy seed — the brain of a fruit fly gets a lot of bang for its buck.

Researchers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of Caltech, the Future and Emerging Technologies program of the European Community, and the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies in Rome, Italy are working at the cutting edge of robotics science.

As we approach an era when robots will be ubiquitous in our daily lives, there is concern about how humans and these intelligent machines will coexist. Robot ethicists are now debating limitations that might be placed on robot capabilities and on how humans can use robots.

Dr. Paul, featured in the segment on agenesis of the corpus callosum, is the head of the Corpus Callosum Research Program at Caltech. This program represents the hub of the AgCC Research Consortium, a collaborative effort with other research universities.

The corpus callosum is the structure that connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain. It is the largest white-matter structure in the brain. Agenesis of the corpus callosum (AgCC) is a condition in which this structure is partly or completely missing.

Recognized today primarily as the man who in 1971 leaked the Pentagon Papers to the NEW YORK TIMES, Daniel Ellsberg had an early career as an economic theorist specializing in decision making. His major contribution to the field, the Ellsberg paradox, illustrates people’s aversion to ambiguity when they have to make choices.

Using brain-imaging technology, neuroscientists established the specific roles of different parts of the brain by the mid-1990s. Soon this research had come to the attention of a number of economists and neurologists, who began studying brain activity in subjects as they were presented with economic problems and games.