Polina Porotskaya


Polina Porotskaya is a former intern at Spectrum and a graduate student in the Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program at New York University. Polina writes about neuroscience, biology and medicine. She has a B.A. in neuroscience from Columbia University.

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Illustration of folded origami.

Dimensionality—neuroscience’s red herring?

Placing too much emphasis on a specific interpretation of dimensionality, or treating it as an end-all quantification of some aspect of neural computation, may hinder progress in understanding the brain.

By Matthew Perich
7 September 2026 | 8 min read
Monkeys at Dutch primate center.

Dutch primate center awaits October animal research debate

Science is forging ahead at the Biomedical Primate Research Centre in the Netherlands, following a reversal of last year’s mandate to phase out primate studies. But researchers aren’t sure how long the reprieve will last.

By Lauren Schenkman
2 September 2026 | 5 min read

When we sleep, our brain is filled with spontaneous neural activity. What is it doing?

Daniel Levenstein explains how internally generated brain activity during sleep shapes our cognition, and why NeuroAI is such a powerful approach to understanding the brain.

By Paul Middlebrooks
2 September 2026 | 96 min listen