• Illustration of a fly in various poses.
  • Photograph of Theanne Griffith sitting at a table with her hands interlocked over a stack of books, with one that she has published at the very top.
  • Composite illustration of Ashley Bourke, Christian Cazares, Minerva Contreras, De-Shaine Murray, Fernanda Juarez Anaya, Maeghan Murie-Mazariegos and Maribel Patiño.
  • Photograph of Ciona Kelly.
  • Illustration of overlapping silhouettes of two faces in profile facing a matrix of dots of various colors and sizes.
  • A photograph of researcher Aya Osman
  • Headshots of Philip Adeniyi, Samir Ahboucha, Willias Masocha and Daniel Gams Massi.
  • Collage of black researchers, buildings at HBCUs and scientific equipment.

Today’s action potentials

FUNDING UPDATE
President Trump signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act into law on Tuesday evening. The final 2026 spending plan includes a modest budget increase for the National Institutes of Health and a 33 percent boost to the BRAIN Initiative, but it maintains a multiyear funding approach that could limit the number of grants awarded, as The Transmitter previously reported.
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QUOTE

I think the reason this specific drug [leucovorin] has been of such interest is because of the publicity around it, not because we as scientists believe that this is the drug that we should be testing. — SHAFALI JESTE, CHAIR OF PEDIATRICS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES

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SCIENTISTS V. PUBLISHERS
A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by researchers claiming that that major academic publishers had created a monopoly by not paying for peer review and prohibiting simultaneous manuscript submissions, among other practices.
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Spectrum logo
Researcher Russell Poldrack's face closeup, with a scanner seen out of focus behind him.
Brain imaging

A brief history of precision self-scanning

When a researcher solved a logistical problem by going rogue, the idea proved remarkably infectious.

By Lauren Gravitz
21 January 2026 | 13 min read
Illustration of two hands holding an abstract geometric object that resembles a human brain.
Neuroscience

The state of neuroscience in 2025: An overview

The Transmitter presents a portrait of the field through four lenses: its focus, its output, its people and its funding.

By The Transmitter
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Stars shooting upward.
Early-career researchers

The Transmitter ’s Rising Stars of Neuroscience 2025

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Illustration of a series of shapes, with a few resembling human eyes.
The big picture

The visual system’s lingering mystery: Connecting neural activity and perception

Figuring out how the brain uses information from visual neurons may require new tools. I asked 10 neuroscientists what experimental and conceptual methods they think we’re missing.

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A drosophila connectome.

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.

By Francisco J. Rivera Rosario
7 October 2025 | 17 min read
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