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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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20 episodes
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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.
July 24 · 7 min
In memoriam: Kevin Dunbar, who traced the neural basis of human reasoning
Using imaging technologies, he transformed our understanding of how creativity and scientific discovery arise in the brain.
July 21 · 7 min
Redefining underrepresentation in global neuroscience
Shifting the focus of equity initiatives from identity categories to structural barriers can reveal overlooked challenges and increase support and participation worldwide.
July 14 · 4 min
This paper changed my life: Embracing an early model for naturalistic neuroscience
A 1992 PNAS paper showed how birdsong upregulates the expression of an immediate early gene in bird forebrains. The work revealed to Ribeiro the importance of studying molecular responses in naturalistic contexts.
July 13 · 8 min
Watching the mind build a world: Lucid dreaming as a model for generative perception
Lucid dreaming offers a rare opportunity to observe and probe perception from within.
July 9 · 10 min
Mass-produced science is coming. What happens to scientists?
Artificial intelligence may soon enable researchers to generate high-quality science at a previously unimaginable speed. For science consumers-the public, medical patients, technology users-the likely effects will be positive. For scientists, the effects will be as disruptive as industrial mass production was for artisan manufacturers.
July 6 · 5 min
How to use artificial intelligence to strengthen scientific processes and scholarly output
As AI-driven systems are integrated into all aspects of science, we need to make sure that they read and write to a shared data and knowledge space.
July 1 · 5 min
What mosquitos lay bare about proprioception
By comparing the proprioceptive systems of mosquitos and fruit flies, Sweta Agrawal aims to uncover fundamental features of the ability to sense self-movement.
June 29 · 8 min
AI can't solve the brain without data that fit together
The brain's first foundation models exist because some areas of neuroscience did the slow work of developing and adopting standards to help integrate data. Artificial intelligence cannot do that work for us.
June 26 · 8 min
Remembering Avis H. Cohen, who bridged disciplines to decode lamprey locomotion
The founding director of the University of Maryland's Neuroscience and Cognitive Science program brought neuroscience, math and engineering together.
June 24 · 5 min
Cooperating marmosets extend decision-making model of the brain
When a pair of marmosets works together to earn some marshmallow fluff, one of them decides to act only after its brain accumulates enough evidence about what the other is doing, new work shows.
June 22 · 6 min
Transforming AI models into useful model organisms
These systems were not built to explain the brain. But treating them as model organisms that we can perturb and evolve will move us closer to that goal.
June 22 · 6 min
Exclusive: Janelia sunsets rodent work, launches transparent fish project
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Research Campus is banking on whole-brain imaging in the Danionella fish to advance neuroscience, but some scientists forced to close their labs say that even with a three-year runway and transitional support, they feel betrayed by the pivot.
June 18 · 4 min
Cousin comparison parses genetic effects in autism
The approach helps reveal whether maternal genes contribute directly to autism in children or have indirect effects on the prenatal environment.
June 17 · 6 min
This paper changed my life: Learning the molecular rules of cell identity
A 1987 Cell paper showed that a single transcription factor could turn fibroblasts into muscle cells. The work inspired Ardem Patapoutian to think about the molecular codes that define neuronal subtypes.
June 16 · 19 min
Models at the speed of thought: How AI coding is reshaping theoretical neuroscience
Agentic coding makes it possible to specify a neuroscience model in hours instead of months. Seven neuroscientists weigh in on what that tectonic change may bring to the field.

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