The Transmitter: Neuroscience News and Perspectives
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A community-designed experiment tests open questions in predictive processing
Perimenopause: An important—and understudied—transition for the brain
‘Neuroethics: The Implications of Mapping and Changing the Brain,’ an excerpt
Today’s action potentials
”Like other emerging neurotechnologies, with brain organoids we need to avoid both hype and underestimation regarding their neurobiological potential and the ethical issues they raise. — WALTER GLANNON, PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY
Upcoming Webinars
Top-down control of neocortical threat memory
From retinal encoding to oculomotor adaptation: How the hum…
Without monkeys, neuroscience has no future
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
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
Journal retracts two papers evaluating ADHD interventions
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
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 missing half of the neurodynamical systems theory
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
‘How to Change a Memory: One Neuroscientist’s Quest to Alter the Past,’ an excerpt
‘What Is Intelligence?’: An excerpt
The Transmitter’s reading list: Six upcoming neuroscience books, plus notable titles in 2025
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.