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Researchers may have a new way to watch the brain pulse, thanks to an ultrasound probe and a tiny window in the skull.

This acoustically transparent hole allowed a team in California to capture, using functional ultrasound imaging, an extraordinary view of human brain activity of very normal hobbies, according to a study published Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine.

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“Seeing into a human and literally looking into his brain as he was playing guitar or doing a connect the dots game was quite remarkable,” said co-author Richard Andersen, a neuroscientist at the California Institute of Technology.

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