The Transmitter: Neuroscience News and Perspectives
Featured
David Krakauer reflects on the foundations and future of complexity science
Fleeting sleep interruptions may help brain reset
Why practical summer courses in neuroscience matter
Today’s action potentials
”For faculty like me, these courses deliver sublime moments of discovery that reconnect us to why we became scientists in the first place. — JOHN TUTHILL, PROFESSOR OF NEUROBIOLOGY AND BIOPHYSICS, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
Many autism-linked proteins influence hair-like cilia on human brain cells
Upcoming Online Seminars
In your New Year’s resolutions for 2025, consider public outreach
The Transmitter’s favorite essays and columns of 2024
What are recurrent networks doing in the brain?
Open-access neuroscience comes to the classroom: Q&A with Liz Kirby
Solving intelligence requires new research and funding models
A scientific fraud. An investigation. A lab in recovery.
Science is built on trust. What happens when someone destroys it?
Putting a bright idea to the test
A surprising wave of findings in mice suggests that light and sound flickering at 40 hertz clears the brain of Alzheimer’s-disease-linked plaques. Several companies are hoping to prove it works in people.
From bench to bot: How important is prompt engineering?
From bench to bot: Does AI really make you a more efficient writer?
From bench to bot: Boost your writing with AI personas
Sniffing out the mysteries of olfaction
A background in physics, and his own curiosity, have helped Dmitry Rinberg tackle the complexities of the neuroscience of smell.
Timothy Ryan on his pivotal switch from studying particle physics to decoding synaptic transmission
Biosensors and being fearless with Lin Tian
To keep or not to keep: Neurophysiology’s data dilemma
The S-index Challenge: Develop a metric to quantify data-sharing success
A README for open neuroscience
What makes memories last—dynamic ensembles or static synapses?
Teasing out how different subfields conceptualize central terms might help move this long-standing debate forward. I asked eight scientists to weigh in.
What are mechanisms? Unpacking the term is key to progress in neuroscience
Mechanism is a common and powerful concept, invoked in grant calls and publication guidelines. But scientists use it in different ways, making it difficult to clarify standards in the field. We asked nine scientists to weigh in.