How to teach this paper

Recent articles

This column by Ashley Juavinett guides educators and self-learners through recent seminal neuroscience papers.

A human arm and a robot arm write code together on a small blackboard.

How to teach programming in the age of AI

Scientists and educators are concerned about students using artificial intelligence to shortcut their learning. But there are also opportunities, especially when it comes to teaching neuroscience students how to code.

By Ashley Juavinett
30 March 2026 | 8 min read
A hand points to a chalkboard with an astrocyte on it.

How to teach this paper: ‘Neurotoxic reactive astrocytes are induced by activated microglia,’ by Liddelow et al. (2017)

Shane Liddelow and his collaborators identified the factors that transform astrocytes from their helpful to harmful form. Their work is a great choice if you want to teach students about glial cell types, cell culture, gene expression or protein measurement.

By Ashley Juavinett
30 June 2025 | 10 min read
Against a background of American dollar bills, two hands gesture at a whiteboard that shows liquid flowing from one beacon into another.

How to teach students about science funding

As researchers reel over the uncertain state of U.S. federal funding, educating students on the business of science is more important than ever.

By Ashley Juavinett
19 February 2025 | 8 min read
Photograph of two hands drawing overlapping red and blue waveforms on a chalkboard.

How to teach this paper: ‘Coordination of entorhinal-hippocampal ensemble activity during associative learning,’ by Igarashi et al. (2014)

Kei Igarashi and his colleagues established an important foundation in memory research: the premise that brain regions oscillate together to form synaptic connections and, ultimately, memories.

By Ashley Juavinett
4 November 2024 | 8 min read
Illustration of a canyon landscape with an orange clock face in place of a sun.

How to teach this paper: ‘Behavioral time scale synaptic plasticity underlies CA1 place fields,’ by Bittner and Milstein et al. (2017)

Katie Bittner, Aaron Milstein and their colleagues found that cellular learning can happen over longer timescales than Hebb’s rule predicts. How long should we wait to teach students about this phenomenon?

By Ashley Juavinett
24 June 2024 | 11 min read
An illustration of mice observing a lesson on a tiny chalkboard

How to teach this paper: ‘Creating a false memory in the hippocampus,’ by Ramirez and Liu et al. (2013)

We’ve known how to implant memories in mouse minds for a decade. Can we implant these ideas in our students?

By Ashley Juavinett
6 February 2024 | 10 min read
A hand points to an illustration on a chalkboard.

How to teach this paper: ‘Neural population dynamics during reaching,’ by Churchland & Cunningham et al. (2012)

This foundational paper, with more than 1,500 citations, is an important departure from early neuroscience research. Don’t be afraid of the math in the first paragraph.

By Ashley Juavinett
13 November 2023 | 9 min read

Get notified every time a new column in this series is published.

Explore more from The Transmitter

Mice playing, engaged in learning and memory: some of their brains are yellow, and some are red, matching a red and yellow legend that runs through the image to underscore both memory and learning.

This paper changed my life: A technical breakthrough for memory studies

In a 2007 Science paper, Mark Mayford and his colleagues found that some neurons activated during learning are also recruited during memory retrieval. Noelia Weisstaub shares how this study and others drove an era of great progress in tool development.

By Noelia Weisstaub
14 August 2026 | 5 min read

Early experience reshapes zebrafish retinal cells, alters behavior

The cells undergo a classic form of plasticity previously thought to occur only in downstream visual circuits.

By Siddhant Pusdekar
13 August 2026 | 0 min watch
Research image of expression of MEIS2 in PV interneurons.

Loss of interneuron plasticity may be shared hallmark of neurodevelopmental conditions

Restoring an experience-dependent interneuron plasticity gene in adulthood improves memory and cuts seizures in CNTNAP2 knockout mice, a new study shows.

By Claudia López Lloreda
12 August 2026 | 5 min read