Hindsight is 2020: The year in review

Recent articles

top-down view of the mouse brain

2020 in research images

Feast your eyes on glowing glia and organoids; high-resolution, digital renditions of mouse brains; fluorescent beads passing through zebrafish guts and more.

By Spectrum
23 December 2020 | 2 min read
researcher facing off with the coronavirus.

Rewind: Spectrum’s best from 2020

Our staff picks the stories, podcasts and special reports that stood out from the rest this past year.

By Spectrum
23 December 2020 | 5 min read
Lab scene during COVID 19 pandemic.

Inside the reporter’s notebook: Dispatches from 2020

Spectrum's staff couldn't report on the ground this year — with no lab visits, sit-down interviews or in-person conferences to attend — but we observed a lot of changes from our computer screens.

By Spectrum
23 December 2020 | 4 min read
Micrograph of nerve cells being targeted by CRISPR enzyme to activate the silenced gene in Angelman syndrome

Hot topics in autism research, 2020

The Spectrum team highlights five topics that distinguished autism research in 2020: diversity in data, gene therapies, subtyping, social circuitry and the ‘autism gene’ debate.

By Spectrum
23 December 2020 | 8 min read
White lab mouse sitting in a gloved hand.

Notable papers in autism research, 2020

Gene therapies and the factors influencing autism traits top Spectrum’s list of the 10 most notable research findings we covered in 2020.

By Spectrum
23 December 2020 | 4 min read

Explore more from The Transmitter

Long-sought walking circuit found in fruit flies

The neuronal circuit controlling repetitive locomotion patterns in any animal has been a mystery until now.

By Natalia Mesa
13 May 2026 | 0 min watch
Neuroscientist Julieta Sztarker holds an open-air teach-in for the general public in Plaza Italia in Buenos Aires.

Crisis de financiación en Argentina desata nueva ola de protestas

Dos años luego de que colapsara la financiación para investigación del país colapsara, los científicos están manifestando en contra del incumplimiento del gobierno para restaurar becas cortadas previamente y aumentar salarios como lo establece una del 2025.

By Claudia López Lloreda, Natalia Mesa
12 May 2026 | 5 min read

The silent majority: How astrocytes shape the brain across scales

Melissa Cooper talks to Mac Shine about her new work that reveals how these glial cells—long dismissed as the brain’s housekeepers—wire together in precise, long-range networks that remodel in response to experience.

By Mac Shine
12 May 2026 | 3 min read