If you were a scientist studying the brain, you would want to get as many details as you could about how even the smallest part of the brain works. A single brain cell, called a neuron, is very difficult to observe in its natural state, because it’s on the inside of you! It’s also very small, so doctors and scientists need to find other ways to look at brain cells besides viewing them directly. One new idea is to use very tiny wires called nanowires — 100 times thinner than a human hair — to guide through the blood system and into the brain. Because the wires are so small, scientists could guide them to locations where they touch a single nerve cell and monitor its electrical activity. This would give them a much closer picture of how these brain cells are working, closer than the techniques they use now which tell them things about small regions of brain tissue made up of many, many brain cells. This technique hasn’t yet been tried on human beings, but a successful test of the nanowire technique was run on tissue samples in laboratory. Maybe someday you’ll even be able to watch your own neurons as they work inside your brain!