The Transmitter: Neuroscience News and Perspectives
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‘How to Change a Memory: One Neuroscientist’s Quest to Alter the Past,’ an excerpt
Journal retracts two papers evaluating ADHD interventions
Constellation of studies charts brain development, offers ‘dramatic revision’
Today’s action potentials
”This is a dramatic revision of the fundamental principles that we thought were true in the cerebral cortex. — TOMASZ NOWAKOWSKI, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF NEUROLOGICAL SURGERY, ANATOMY AND PSYCHIATRY, AND OF BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO
Certain synapses can switch between excitatory and inhibitory orientations in mice, according to a recent preprint.
Basal ganglia neurons in the entopeduncular nucleus that project onto the lateral habenula co-release glutamate and GABA. The new research demonstrates how the “conflicting information” from entopeduncular neurons enables experience-dependent plasticity in these synapses, study investigator Shun Li, a graduate student in Bernardo Sabatini’s lab at Harvard Medical School, told The Transmitter.
Upcoming Webinars
Seeing Through Memory Systems
Top-down control of neocortical threat memory
From retinal encoding to oculomotor adaptation: How the hum…
Our searchable repository of useful research can restore trust in federally funded basic science
How neuroscientists are using AI
Neuroscience needs engineers—for more reasons than you think
The missing half of the neurodynamical systems theory
Constellation of studies charts brain development, offers ‘dramatic revision’
Nonhuman primate research to lose federal funding at major European facility
First Pan-African neuroscience journal gets ready to launch
Fly database secures funding for another year, but future remains in flux
Meet the Autism Data Science Initiative grantees
Should neuroscientists ‘vibe code’?
What U.S. science stands to lose without international graduate students and postdoctoral researchers
How to build a truly global computational neuroscience community
New questions around motor neurons and plasticity
A researcher’s theory hangs muscle degeneration on a broken neural circuit.
Cephalopods, vision’s next frontier
For decades, scientists have been teased by the strange but inaccessible cephalopod visual system. Now, thanks to a technological breakthrough from a lab in Oregon, data are finally coming straight from the octopus brain.
This paper changed my life: Sandra Jurado marvels at the first-ever 3D model of a synaptic vesicle
This paper changed my life: Dan Goodman on a paper that reignited the field of spiking neural networks
Image integrity issues create new headache for subarachnoid hemorrhage research
Authors retract Science paper on controversial fMRI method
Alzheimer’s paper retracted over apparent image duplication
Paper by memory institute director garners expression of concern over image integrity
Diving in with Nachum Ulanovsky
With an eye toward realism, the neuroscientist, who has a new study about bats out today, creates microcosms of the natural world to understand animal behavior.
The visual system’s lingering mystery: Connecting neural activity and perception
Facial movements telegraph cognition in mice
Michael Breakspear and Mac Shine explain how brain processing changes across neural population scales
Everything everywhere all at once: Decision-making signals engage entire brain
‘What Is Intelligence?’: An excerpt
The Transmitter’s reading list: Six upcoming neuroscience books, plus notable titles in 2025
‘Bird Brains and Behavior,’ an excerpt
One year of FlyWire: How the resource is redefining Drosophila research
We asked nine neuroscientists how they are using FlyWire data in their labs, how the connectome has transformed the field and what new tools they would like to see in the future.
Beyond Newtonian causation in neuroscience: Embracing complex causality
The traditional mechanistic framework must give way to a richer understanding of how brains actually generate behavior over time.