In May 2002, on an isolated hilltop in Delphi overlooking the Aegean Sea, several dozen scientists convened to discuss how the cerebral cortex, the brain's outer layer, develops.It was there, at the site of the legendary Greek oracle, that Gordon Fishell reached a turning point in his career.Fishell, then 42, had been studying how the developmental environment in a mouse embryo influences how stem cells turn into different types of interneurons ― the intriguing cells that dampen electrical signaling in the brain1. But he needed help understanding the next step: measuring the activity of fully developed interneurons.He found his answer in conference organizer Arnold Kriegstein, then a Columbia University physiologist renowned for his brain-cell recording techniques. Soon after the Delphi meeting, on a much noisier island five thousand miles west, the two scientists began what Fishell now calls the "taxi cab collaboration."Read more at...SFARI, December 2007.