This arresting image created in the lab of Steven A. Siegelbaum, the chair of Columbia’s neuroscience department and a principal investigator at the Zuckerman Institute, shows a mouse’s brain cells in an area of the hippocampus called CA2. Siegelbaum and his colleagues have discovered that CA2 plays a role in social memory, or the ability of individuals to remember encounters with others, and in aggressive behavior toward strangers. They suspect that manipulating CA2 activity could help people with psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and autism.
This article appears in the Spring 2019 print edition with the title "Are You Threatening Me?"
