Vision

Recent articles

Nachum Ulanovsky sits against a black background with one bat in his hands and another with its wings spread above his head.

Neuroscience’s leaders, legacies and rising stars of 2025

Here are seven stories from the past year about some of the field’s most engaging figures.

By The Transmitter
24 December 2025 | 2 min read

Waves of calcium activity dictate eye structure in flies

Synchronized signals in non-neuronal retinal cells draw the tiny compartments of a fruit fly’s compound eye into alignment during pupal development.

By Lauren Schneider
12 December 2025 | 0 min watch
Composite of headshots of neuroscience prize winners from 2025.

Top neuroscience prize winners in 2025

The awards recognize lifetime achievements and new discoveries.

By The Transmitter
15 November 2025 | 4 min read
Illustration of a series of shapes, with a few resembling human eyes.

The visual system’s lingering mystery: Connecting neural activity and perception

Figuring out how the brain uses information from visual neurons may require new tools. I asked 10 neuroscientists what experimental and conceptual methods they think we’re missing.

By Grace Lindsay
13 October 2025 | 24 min read
Illustration of synapse-like threads connecting in various ways.

Learning in living mice defies classic synaptic plasticity rule

Donald Hebb’s theory—memorably summarized as “cells that fire together, wire together”—does not explain the shifting hippocampal connections in mice learning to navigate a virtual environment, according to a new study.

By Sydney Wyatt
28 May 2025 | 5 min read
Judit Pungor and Angelique Allen stand in front of a saltwater tank.

Cephalopods, vision’s next frontier

For decades, scientists have been teased by the strange but inaccessible cephalopod visual system. Now, thanks to a technological breakthrough from a lab in Oregon, data are finally coming straight from the octopus brain.

By Calli McMurray
27 May 2025 | 13 min read
Side view of a Tardigrade.

How tiny tardigrades could help tackle systems neuroscience questions

The eight-legged, millimeter-long animals reveal how small nervous systems produce complex behaviors and perceptual abilities, a preprint suggests.

By Dori Grijseels
11 March 2025 | 6 min read
Research image of a mouse brain slice stained in purple and yellow.

Subthalamic plasticity helps mice squelch innate fear responses

When the animals learn that a perceived threat is not dangerous, long-term activity changes in a part of the subthalamus suppress their instinctive fears.

By Sydney Wyatt
6 February 2025 | 5 min read
Image of squirrels on a branch.

NeuroAI and the hidden complexity of agency

As we attempt to build autonomous artificial-intelligence systems, we're discovering that a capability we take for granted in animals may be much more complex than we imagined.

By Anthony Zador
5 February 2025 | 6 min read
Portrait of Yves Fregnac.

In memoriam: Yves Frégnac, influential and visionary French neuroscientist

Frégnac, who died on 18 October at the age of 73, built his career by meeting neuroscience’s complexity straight on.

By Bahar Gholipour
18 December 2024 | 9 min read

Explore more from The Transmitter

Books.

The Transmitter’s most-read neuroscience book excerpts of 2025

Books by Nachum Ulanovsky, Nicole Rust, and Andrew Iwaniuk and Georg Striedter made the list of some of the year's most engaging neuroscience titles.

By The Transmitter
24 December 2025 | 2 min read
Stamp over a sheet of paper.

The Transmitter’s top news articles of 2025

Check out some of our most-read stories, covering neuroscience funding and policy changes in the United States, and methodological issues in high-profile neuroscience papers.

By The Transmitter
24 December 2025 | 3 min read
Illustration of people walking over colored circles on the ground.

Spectrum 2025: Year in review

Revisit some of the conversations and debates—on topics from leucovorin to the gut microbiome—that have shaped autism research in the past 12 months.

By The Transmitter
24 December 2025 | 2 min read

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