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The Transmitter

Your latest update from The Transmitter, an essential resource for the neuroscience community, dedicated to helping scientists at all career stages stay current and build connections. Read more: https://www.thetransmitter.org/

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35 episodes
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English

Episodes 35

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October 12 · 8 min
The neural code at 100
In two 1926 articles, Edgar Douglas Adrian revealed that neurons communicate through trains of spikes.
October 5 · 6 min
What AI can learn from hunger
To enhance AI safety, take a lesson from biological brains; a small set of wants maintains durable control over a much larger cognitive system.
September 30 · 6 min
How the pipa frog hunts prey by touch
Each of the frog's eight fingers branches into 16 ultra-sensitive tips, which together function as a fovea-potentially the first demonstration of this type of sensory structure outside of mammals.
September 28 · 8 min
Revisiting the neural correlates of consciousness
Life happens in real time, but experience may be composed in ragtime-like the music genre, full of offbeat notes and uneven rhythms. The assumption that waking life consists of a "stream" of conscious representations has inadvertently led consciousness science to its current impasse.
September 25 · 6 min
Grant review needs reform. How about we add an element of chance?
A process that uses a lottery system saves time, reduces strategic resubmission and accepts that, above a quality threshold, luck has always played a part in science funding.
September 16 · 6 min
This paper changed my life: Transformative work in addiction neuroscience
A 2011 Nature study found that loss of a nicotinic receptor subunit leads to increased nicotine intake in mice. The work set the standard for how to functionally validate genetic association study findings in neuroscience.
September 15 · 8 min
Building brain-computer interfaces at a neurotech company
At Blackrock Neurotech, Spencer Kellis develops implantable devices that help people with brain and spinal cord conditions communicate, move and more.
September 14 · 7 min
Infant memories: Lost but not gone?
Infantile amnesia is not simply a story about forgetting the past. It is an opportunity to understand how memory itself is built.
September 9 · 7 min
Neuromechanical models deepen our understanding of animal motor control
Thanks to recent progress in physics-based simulators and robotics, it has never been easier for neuroscientists to use neuromechanical modeling to test hypotheses about animal movement.
September 7 · 9 min
Dimensionality-neuroscience's red herring?
Placing too much emphasis on a specific interpretation of dimensionality, or treating it as an end-all quantification of some aspect of neural computation, may hinder progress in understanding the brain.
August 28 · 5 min
Inside the sea cucumber's regenerative superpowers
José E. García-Arrarás studies how these marine invertebrates manage to regrow their nervous system, intestines and other internal organs in a matter of months after threats prompt them to literally spill their guts.
August 28 · 8 min
How FALAN is building a thriving neuroscience community in Latin America
As the Federation of Latin American and Caribbean Neuroscience Societies Congress kicks off next week, its president shares how the organization aims to foster collaborations and provide high-quality training for young neuroscientists in the region.
August 24 · 7 min
How, when and why to use agentic AI in our neuroscience labs
With agentic AI's rapid infiltration into science, researchers need to develop AI use policies and practices.
August 21 · 8 min
Climate neuroscience needs 'integration' and 'guided' research
Five years after a groundbreaking paper, can a young field move beyond piecemeal studies?
August 19 · 4 min
Brainstem neurons add new element to 'already complex' anxiety circuitry
Precise optogenetic modulation of a medullary neuron population reveals their role in anxiety-like behaviors.
August 17 · 8 min
Mind over metrics: How can we tell if two brains (or AI models) are alike?
The ability to record from large populations of neurons has triggered the development of myriad methods for comparing them. But we're still grappling with how to convert measures of likeness into a better mechanistic understanding.
August 14 · 4 min
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.
August 10 · 10 min
Are parts of the memory trace found in the 'astroengram?'
Neurons have long taken top billing in memory, but researchers are making the case for astrocytes.
August 3 · 8 min
Scientific talent is global. Access to the world's scientific stage is not.
Neuroscience in Chile, and across Latin America, does not lack talent or ideas, but the systems that make science visible-prestigious journals, conferences and networks-increasingly price its researchers out.
July 31 · 5 min
How thirteen-lined ground squirrels illuminate retinal development
In most mammalian retinas, rods outnumber cones. But that ratio is flipped in ground squirrels, a quirk that helps Seth Blackshaw explore how retinal cells develop their identities.

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