Open neuroscience

Recent articles

A curly line connects two pencils that are hovering over overlapping speech bubbles.

Say what? The Transmitter’s top quotes of 2024

“We’ve cured mouse-heimer’s thousands of times...”—find out who said this to a Transmitter reporter, and read our other favorite quotes from the past year.

By The Transmitter
23 December 2024 | 2 min read
Illustration of an open book with the pages creating a brain shape, and with a tassel resembling a DNA sequence.

Open-access neuroscience comes to the classroom: Q&A with Liz Kirby

Neuroscience textbooks can be prohibitively expensive for some undergraduate students. A new open-access alternative seeks to change that.

By Francisco J. Rivera Rosario
13 December 2024 | 6 min read
Illustration of a funnel taking abstract shapes in at the top and spouting an organized flow of shapes out at the bottom.

To keep or not to keep: Neurophysiology’s data dilemma

An exponential growth in data size presents neuroscientists with a significant challenge: Should we be keeping all raw data or focusing on processed datasets? I asked experimentalists and theorists for their thoughts.

By Nima Dehghani
25 November 2024 | 5 min read
Illustration of three figures standing in front of a grid of dots and a world map.

The S-index Challenge: Develop a metric to quantify data-sharing success

The NIH-sponsored effort aims to help incentivize scientists to share data. But many barriers to the widespread adoption of useful data-sharing remain.

By Loren Frank
8 October 2024 | 6 min listen
Illustration of three figures cleaning data with brooms and brushes.

A README for open neuroscience

Making data (and code) useful for yourself automatically makes it useful for others.

By Samuel Gershman
9 September 2024 | 5 min read
Illustrated portrait of Lin Tian.

Biosensors and being fearless with Lin Tian

Tian discusses protein function and structure, and the historic city in China where she was born.

By Brady Huggett
1 September 2024 | 62 min listen
Illustration of a blue face with sunglasses.

Neuroscience needs a career path for software engineers

Few institutions have mechanisms for the type of long-term positions that would best benefit the science.

By Gaëlle Chapuis, Olivier Winter
19 August 2024 | 7 min listen
Illustration of a hand holding a pen reaching towards a blank sheet of paper.

Neuroimaging researchers pen statement protesting UK Biobank data-access changes

The signatories asked the organization to grant all imaging researchers a data-download exemption until the cloud platform can accommodate their processing needs.

By Calli McMurray
30 July 2024 | 4 min read
A digitally distorted image of a file folder against a blue gradient background.

Data access changes to UK Biobank stir unease in neuroscientists

“I feel a little bit in limbo,” says neuroscientist Stephanie Noble, who has paused a study using Biobank data after the repository shifted from a data download to a cloud-only access model.

By Calli McMurray
16 July 2024 | 7 min read
Illustration of a scientist attempting to wrangle many forms of data at once: a pile of charts and graphs threatens to knock them off of their feet as they attempt to prop it up.

Neuroscience graduate students deserve comprehensive data-literacy education

Despite growing requirements around how to handle and share data, formal training is lacking.

By Letisha R. Wyatt
15 July 2024 | 6 min read

Explore more from The Transmitter

Research image of a mossy fiber terminal in the cerebellar granule cell layer.

Cerebellar SHANK3; telehealth coaching for caregivers; psychedelics

Here is a roundup of autism-related news and research spotted around the web for the last two weeks of December.

By Jill Adams
2 January 2025 | 2 min read
View out a window onto an open plaza in Krakow.

My hope for displaced Ukrainian children with autism, an update

The largest ongoing refugee crisis in Europe has overwhelmed humanitarian agencies. Meeting the needs of families affected by autism has not been a priority.

By Chrystina Dolyniuk
2 January 2025 | 6 min read
Illustration of distorted lines of different colors being pulled into a box where they are smoothed in a single multicolored line.

The Transmitter’s favorite essays and columns of 2024

From sex differences in Alzheimer’s disease to enduring citation bias, experts weighed in on important scientific and practical issues in neuroscience.

By The Transmitter
23 December 2024 | 2 min read