Lucía Prieto Godino, the scientist who transferred a behavior from one species to another

A fly’s brain is the size of a grain of sand, but Spanish neuroscientist Lucía Prieto Godino is convinced that this tiny organ holds the keys to the colossal human nervous system, which is capable of creating Don Quixote, the smallpox vaccine, and the Great Pyramid of Giza. The 42-year-old researcher directs her own laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute in London, which is dedicated to studying neural circuits: the connections between cells upon which thoughts, memories, and behaviors depend. “In recent years, we have learned a great deal about how the brain works, but we still understand almost nothing about how it evolves. That is the big question of our laboratory,” she says.

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