The human body has a mind-boggling amount of neurons.
Nearly 100 billion neurons fire messages across almost 100 trillion synapses.
It's an enormous network.
The communications zipping through the nervous system affect how a person reacts to a situation--and his or her behavior will change based on what's going on.
Figuring out how, when, and where nuances in behavior comes into play poses an interesting puzzle, especially for scientists who traditionally prefer results where A leads to B.
"We often think of variability in a task as a disadvantage," says Andrew Gordus, research associate at the Lulu and Anthony Wang Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior at The Rockefeller University, "but it allows us to...