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Recent articles

An image of a fossil.

Expanding ‘little brain’ may have powered dinosaur flight

The cerebellum swelled in size before flight evolved among modern birds’ dinosaur ancestors, according to a new comparison of fossilized skulls and living birds.

By Annie Melchor
23 February 2024 | 4 min read
Illustration of hands organizing objects of various shapes and sizes.

Simply making data publicly available isn’t enough. We need to make it easy — that requires community buy-in.

I helped create a standard to make it easy to upload, analyze and compare functional MRI data. An ecosystem of tools has since grown up around it, boosting reproducibility and speeding up research.

By Russell Poldrack
17 January 2024 | 7 min read

Explore more from The Transmitter

Neuronal genes SATB2 and MEF2C.

Nuclear location helps control gene activity during brain development

A study of developing human brain tissue suggests that genes switch on more strongly when they move from the nucleus’s edge toward structures that contain proteins involved in making and processing RNA.

By Giorgia Guglielmi
20 August 2026 | 4 min read
Cortical organoids.

Five-year-old human brain organoids aged on schedule

The cultured spheres typically mimic only prenatal development, but the five-year-old ones grown in Paola Arlotta’s lab acquired postnatal features.

By Claudia López Lloreda
19 August 2026 | 5 min read