The Transmitter: Neuroscience News and Perspectives

Featured

A see-through human brain with circuits inside it.
Language

‘Wired for Words: The Neural Architecture of Language,’ an excerpt

By Gregory Hickok
2 December 2025 | 8 min read

Latest

Spectrum

Genetic profiles separate early, late autism diagnoses

Training

How will neuroscience training need to change in the future?

Sex hormones

Sex hormone boosts female rats’ sensitivity to unexpected rewards

Memory

To persist, memories surf molecular waves from thalamus to cortex

Community

The Transmitter’s New Lab Directory

Awards

Top neuroscience prize winners in 2025

Community

The leaders we have lost

Brain stimulation

Remembering Mark Hallett, leader in transcranial magnetic stimulation

Today’s action potentials

WHAT WE ARE READING
In Science, Mitch Leslie describes ongoing debates about the ethics of human brain organoid research.
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NEW RESEARCH
Le Sun et al. investigate global vascular control in zebrafish, finding that the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system “functions as a central hub in global neurovascular communication through driving capillary-to-arteriole patterned activities of brain-wide pericytes.”
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QUOTE
”

I will die on the hill that population coding is the relevant level of encoding information in the brain. — NANCY PADILLA-COREANO, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF NEUROSCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN GAINESVILLE

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Perspectives

A tree limb-like pattern superimposed over a landscape.
Craft and careers

Tracing neuroscience’s family tree to track its growth

By Stephen David
15 November 2025 | 7 min read
Portion of The Transmitter’s state of neuroscience semantic map.
Publishing

Putting 50 years of neuroscience on the map

By The Transmitter
15 November 2025 | 3 min read
A man with glasses reads from a paper with a graph-like pattern of peaks and valleys on it.
Community

The buzziest neuroscience papers of 2023, 2024

By Calli McMurray, Francisco J. Rivera Rosario
15 November 2025 | 18 min read
Abstract flowing shapes.
Sex hormones Microphone

Perimenopause: An important—and understudied—transition for the brain

By Marija Kundakovic
12 November 2025 | 6 min read
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Spectrum logo
Research image of SYNGAP protein in the mouse cortex.
Spectrum

Gene replacement therapy normalizes some traits in SYNGAP1 model mice

By Charles Q. Choi
20 November 2025 | 5 min read
Spotted

Plumbing the link between anti-CASPR2 antibodies and autism; and more

Spectrum

Constellation of studies charts brain development, offers ‘dramatic revision’

Collage of digestive-system organs, the brain and various shapes and figures.
Spectrum

Going against the gut: Q&A with Kevin Mitchell on the autism-microbiome theory

By Lauren Schenkman
13 November 2025 | 7 min read
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Funding and policy

Complex stack of rectangular prisms.
Community

Neurophysiology data-sharing system faces funding cliff

By Lauren Schneider
17 November 2025 | 5 min read
Kevin B Marvel.
Teaching

A change at the top of SfN as neuroscientists gather in San Diego

By Natalia Mesa
16 November 2025 | 6 min read
Illustration of coins falling through space.
Funding

Establishing a baseline: Trends in NIH neuroscience funding from 2008 to 2024

By Natalia Mesa
15 November 2025 | 8 min read
A book in which one page is a door.
Industry

How will the field’s relationship to industry change over the next decade? Will a larger neurotechnology sector emerge?

By The Transmitter
15 November 2025 | 10 min read
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Craft and careers

Two hands hold a paper airplane.
Training

How will neuroscience training need to change in the future?

By The Transmitter
15 November 2025 | 11 min read
Stars shooting upward.
Early-career researchers

The Transmitter ’s Rising Stars of Neuroscience 2025

By Francisco J. Rivera Rosario, Lauren Schneider
15 November 2025 | 23 min read
Glasses with a pie chart in one of the lenses.
Funding

How have funding cuts affected early-career scientists’ futures?

By The Transmitter
15 November 2025 | 9 min read
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Features

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
15 November 2025 | 4 min read
Illustration of a neuron.
Neurodegenerative disorders Microphone

New questions around motor neurons and plasticity

A researcher’s theory hangs muscle degeneration on a broken neural circuit.

By David Adam
10 October 2025 | 9 min read
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This paper changed my life

Abstract illustration of a synaptic vesicle.
This paper changed my life Microphone

This paper changed my life: Sandra Jurado marvels at the first-ever 3D model of a synaptic vesicle

By Sandra Jurado
21 October 2025 | 5 min read
Illustration of human figures holding brightly colored connected dots.
This paper changed my life Microphone

This paper changed my life: Dan Goodman on a paper that reignited the field of spiking neural networks

By Dan Goodman
17 September 2025 | 5 min read
Illustration of a musical staff with notes represented by neurons.
This paper changed my life Microphone

This paper changed my life: Abigail Person on birdsong, feed-forward circuits and convergent computations

By Abigail Person
12 August 2025 | 5 min read
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Publishing

Stack of papers.
Publishing

What are the most-cited neuroscience papers from the past 30 years?

By The Transmitter
15 November 2025 | 11 min read
A grabber tool removes several sheets from a stack of paper.
Retraction

Journal retracts two papers evaluating ADHD interventions

By Calli McMurray
6 November 2025 | 5 min read
Image of potentially duplicated research figures.
Publishing

Image integrity issues create new headache for subarachnoid hemorrhage research

By Lauren Schneider
30 October 2025 | 5 min read
Headshots of Philip Adeniyi, Samir Ahboucha, Willias Masocha and Daniel Gams Massi.
Publishing Microphone

First Pan-African neuroscience journal gets ready to launch

By Lauren Schenkman
28 October 2025 | 4 min read
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PROFILES

Composite of headshots of researchers who opened new labs in the past several years.
Community

The Transmitter’s New Lab Directory

By Francisco J. Rivera Rosario
15 November 2025 | 21 min read
Nachum Ulanovsky sits against a black background with one bat in his hands and another with its wings spread above his head.
Neuroethology Microphone

Diving in with Nachum Ulanovsky

By Claudia López Lloreda
16 October 2025 | 14 min read
Richard Frye.
Spectrum

Exclusive: Who is Richard Frye, the neurologist who researches and advocates for leucovorin as an autism treatment?

By Brendan Borrell
1 October 2025 | 11 min read
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Systems neuroscience

Two bouncing balls.
Neuroscience

What are the fastest-growing areas in neuroscience?

By The Transmitter
15 November 2025 | 6 min read
Collage illustration of a brain, people looking at the brain, and geometric shapes.
Systems neuroscience Microphone

Neuroscience needs engineers—for more reasons than you think

By Timothy O’Leary
3 November 2025 | 8 min read
Illustration of a series of floating pools of water overflowing into each other.
Neural dynamics Microphone

The missing half of the neurodynamical systems theory

By Xiao-Jing Wang
27 October 2025 | 8 min read
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

By Grace Lindsay
13 October 2025 | 24 min read
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Books

Colorful drawing of a human brain.
Organoids

‘Neuroethics: The Implications of Mapping and Changing the Brain,’ an excerpt

By Walter Glannon
11 November 2025 | 7 min read
Colored outlines form the silhouette of a human brain in profile.
Memory

‘How to Change a Memory: One Neuroscientist’s Quest to Alter the Past,’ an excerpt

By Steve Ramirez
7 November 2025 | 9 min read
Book cover of What Is Intelligence.
Learning

‘What Is Intelligence?’: An excerpt

By Blaise Agüera y Arcas
23 September 2025 | 9 min read
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The big picture

A drosophila connectome.
The big picture Microphone

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
Illustration of a hand drawing lines between different points on the outline of a brain.
The big picture Microphone

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.

By Luiz Pessoa
22 September 2025 | 20 min read
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