A new microscope technique produces extra-sharp images of large swaths of the brain.  The technique, described in Optics Express, combines light sheet microscopy -- which uses a thin sheet of light to illuminate the sample -- with confocal microscopy -- which only detects the parts of the sample that are illuminated, ignoring the out-of-focus bits. The combo is ideal for imaging whole brains, as opposed to looking at one little area, says co-author Ludovico Silvestri, of the University of Florence.