Headshot of Yves Sciama.

Yves Sciama

Contributing writer

Yves Sciama is a freelance science writer, trained in biology and science journalism, who covers life and environmental sciences. His work has appeared in Science et VieLe Monde and other major French-language media, as well as in Science. He has won multiple prizes and fellowships, including a yearlong Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2014, and is former president of AJSPI, the French association of science journalists.

From this contributor

Explore more from The Transmitter

Illustration of a laptop computer superimposed over a scroll.

‘Friction-maxxing’ in school: Students should read primary literature, not AI summaries

Trainees need to learn how to identify a neuroscience paper’s major takeaways and integrate them into their understanding. This skill doesn’t come from outsourcing the work to large language models.

By Nora Bradford
26 March 2026 | 5 min read

Head direction cells stably orient mice to outside world

The cells’ representations show little drift over time—unlike those of other navigation system neurons—and may provide a “rigid backbone” for more flexible sensory and cognitive responses.

By Angie Voyles Askham
25 March 2026 | 0 min watch
Thumbnail of Juan Gallego.

Juan Gallego discusses how manifolds are transforming our understanding of the coordination of neuronal population activity

A wealth of evidence supports the view that neural manifolds are real and useful, Gallego says, even if they may not completely solve the age-old mind-body problem.

By Paul Middlebrooks
25 March 2026 | 121 min listen