The Transmitter

Dedicated to helping neuroscientists stay current and build connections. Subscribe to receive the latest news and perspectives on neuroscience: https://www.thetransmitter.org/newsletters/

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Last Notes

2026-10-27 14:43:35 UTC

Computational neuroscientist David Sussillo maps the divergent paths of AI and neuroscience, and where they might still meet.
By Emily Singer
https://www.thetransmitter.org/artificial-intelligence/neuroscience-gave-ai-its-start-what-happens-now/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20261027-q-a-neuroscience-gave-AI-its-start
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2026-10-21 15:05:34 UTC

Almost 15 years after their debut, organoids have become a main player for studying human brain development. But their immaturity and lack of vasculature limits their ability to replace animal-based methods more broadly.
By Claudia López Lloreda
https://www.thetransmitter.org/what-if-nonhuman-primate-research-goes-away/human-brain-organoids-come-of-age-but-still-have-room-to-grow/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20261021-trends-nhp-human-brain-organoids
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2026-09-07 18:45:22 UTC

I fear that placing too much emphasis on a specific interpretation of dimensionality, or treating dimensionality as an end-all quantification of some aspect of neural computation, may lead us down the wrong path, writes Matthew Perich.
https://www.thetransmitter.org/neural-dynamics/dimensionality-neurosciences-red-herring/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20260907-perspectives-dimensionality-neurosciences-red-herring
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2026-09-02 21:16:03 UTC

The Dutch Biomedical Primate Research Centre has escaped a mandate to phase out nonhuman primate studies, but the future looks uncertain.
By Lauren Schenkman
https://www.thetransmitter.org/animal-models/dutch-primate-center-awaits-october-animal-research-debate/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20260902-embargo-news-dutch-primate-awaits-oct-animal-research-debate
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2026-07-01 16:10:08 UTC

To catch illicit AI use in peer review, the organizers of the NeurIPS conference have deliberately concealed instructions for large language models in papers sent out for peer review—a practice that some reviewers say erodes trust.
By Dalmeet Singh Chawla
https://www.thetransmitter.org/publishing/scientists-decry-conferences-use-of-hidden-prompts-to-snare-ai-peer-reviews/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20260701-news-publishing-scientists-decry-conferences-use-hidden-prompts-to-snare-ai-peer-reviews
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2026-05-18 13:52:52 UTC

Exploring why Claude develops something like emotion could ultimately help us better understand the function that emotions serve in humans, writes @nprofile…sl5y.
https://www.thetransmitter.org/emotion/what-can-ai-teach-us-about-emotions/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20260518-perspectives-what-ai-can-teach-us-about-emotions
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2026-04-27 19:42:49 UTC

Learn what researchers have said in @nprofile…mlnp about how they are integrating AI into their work without sacrificing rigor—and where they think the technology introduces concerns—in the latest “Brainstorming” newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/brainstorming-7439697284898033664/
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2026-04-22 21:08:54 UTC

Paul Middlebrooks talks with Liset M. de la Prida about how her efforts to understand the varieties of sharp wave ripples in the hippocampus led to her discovery that specific types of neurons control the properties of neural manifolds.
https://www.thetransmitter.org/brain-inspired/liset-de-la-prida-explains-how-neuron-subtypes-may-control-the-activity-of-large-neural-populations-from-manifolds-to-ripples/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20260422-bi-pod-liset-de-la-prida
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2026-04-09 13:53:30 UTC

“Recognizing the scope and impact of heterogeneity in basic neuroscience is essential if we want to understand complex conditions and the brain in health and disease,” write Linda Douw, Klaus Eyer and Lara Keuck.
https://www.thetransmitter.org/science-and-society/embrace-complexity-to-improve-the-translatability-of-basic-neuroscience/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20260409-perspectives-science-society-embrace-complexity-improve-translatability-basic-neuro
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2026-04-07 13:56:52 UTC

In his new book, Romain Brette pushes back against theories that describe the brain as a “biological computer.” In this excerpt, he challenges equating brain evolution with programming, and the universality of neural network models.
https://www.thetransmitter.org/theoretical-neuroscience/the-brain-in-theory-an-excerpt/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20260407-book-excerpt-romain-brette
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2026-03-23 14:07:16 UTC

Neuroscience has become increasingly concerned with prediction, and machine learning with causal explanation, with each field adopting methods from the other, writes Sam Gershman. Will this bring us closer to understanding neural systems?
https://www.thetransmitter.org/the-big-picture/trading-places-what-happens-when-neuroscience-turns-into-machine-learning-and-machine-learning-turns-into-neuroscience/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20260323-perspectives-big-picture-what-happens-when-neuroscience-turns-into-machine-learning
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2026-03-02 15:08:34 UTC

Broad peer review is crucial for a healthy scientific literature, but neuroscientists turn down review requests too often. Simple math suggests that small groups of scientists can significantly bias the literature, writes Jakob Voigts.
https://www.thetransmitter.org/publishing/lack-of-reviewers-threatens-robustness-of-neuroscience-literature/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20260302-perspectives-lack-of-reviewers-threatens-robustness-neuroscience-literature
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2026-02-16 21:00:06 UTC

If neuroscience is serious about building general principles of brain function, cross-species dialogue must become a core organizing principle rather than an afterthought, writes Nanthia Suthana.
https://www.thetransmitter.org/animal-models/neuroscience-has-a-species-problem/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20260216-perspectives-neuroscience-has-species-problem
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2026-01-21 19:02:12 UTC

The creativity is still mostly human, writes Kenneth Harris. The AI’s strength is relentless, moderately clever trial-and-error in the space of technical solutions.
https://www.thetransmitter.org/artificial-intelligence/how-to-collaborate-with-ai/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20260121-perspectives-how-to-collab-with-ai
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2025-12-02 15:47:05 UTC

In an excerpt from his new book, Gregory Hickok details how meeting David Poeppel upended his understanding of speech processing in the brain and led to them developing the theory for bilateral speech perception.
https://www.thetransmitter.org/language/wired-for-words-the-neural-architecture-of-language-an-excerpt/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20251202-book-excerpt-wired-for-words
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2025-11-19 17:17:19 UTC

The field is buzzing about work on brain-computer interfaces for speech, the mechanism of psychedelics, a broader definition of hippocampal representations and more.
https://www.thetransmitter.org/community/the-buzziest-neuroscience-papers-of-2023-2024/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20251119-state-of-neuro-buzziest-neuroscience-papers-2023-2024
#StateOfNeuroscience
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2025-11-05 18:27:13 UTC

A set of 12 papers published in Nature journals offers new atlases of brain development and hints at the varied evolutionary origins of different cell types.
By Holly Barker
https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/constellation-of-studies-charts-brain-development-offers-dramatic-revision/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20251105-embargo-news-constellation-charts-brain-development

2025-11-03 14:23:11 UTC

Many of our big insights into brain function come from trying to mimic it, writes Timothy O’Leary. This lesson should guide how we organize research programs.
https://www.thetransmitter.org/systems-neuroscience/neuroscience-needs-engineers-for-more-reasons-than-you-think/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20251103-perspectives-neuroscience-needs-engineers

2025-10-30 19:28:31 UTC

Dutch lawmakers have approved the phase-out of primate research at one of Europe’s biggest facilities. Neuroscientists are worried.
By Lauren Schenkman
https://www.thetransmitter.org/animal-models/nonhuman-primate-research-to-lose-federal-funding-at-major-european-facility/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20251030-news-nonhuman-primate-lose-federal-funding-european

2025-10-28 19:34:08 UTC

Cracking the worm would provide a test bed for how molecular recipes generate neural physiology. And it would allow us to understand how neurons work together to yield emergent brain functions, write Edward Boyden, Konrad Körding.
https://www.thetransmitter.org/computational-neuroscience/whole-brain-bottom-up-neuroscience-the-time-for-it-is-now/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20251028-perspectives-rp-whole-brain-bottom-up-neuroscience

2025-10-14 15:42:11 UTC

New findings solve “developmental biology’s most complicated problem”: how each olfactory neuron in the ant expresses exactly one out of hundreds of olfactory receptors.
By Viviane Callier
https://www.thetransmitter.org/sensory-perception/ant-olfactory-neurons-reveal-new-transcriptional-shield-mechanism-of-gene-regulation/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20251014-news-ant-olfactory-neurons-reveal-transcriptional-shield

2025-10-07 14:11:26 UTC

Bradley Dickerson on how a 1940s fly neuroanatomy paper influences his research to this day
https://www.thetransmitter.org/this-paper-changed-my-life/this-paper-changed-my-life-bradley-dickerson-on-how-a-1940s-fly-neuroanatomy-paper-influences-his-research-to-this-day/

2025-06-10 14:42:31 UTC

In her new book, published today, neuroscientist @nprofile…v4qx takes a bird's-eye view of where the neuroscience community is currently and where it needs to go to solve some of the field’s biggest questions.
https://www.thetransmitter.org/community/elusive-cures-why-neuroscience-hasnt-solved-brain-disorders-and-how-we-can-change-that-an-excerpt/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20250610-elusive-cures

2025-06-09 14:15:16 UTC

Keeping up with the literature is essential. But so is devoting time to developing your own scientific ideas, writes Sheena Josselyn.
https://www.thetransmitter.org/craft-and-careers/on-the-importance-of-reading-just-not-too-much/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20250609-importance-of-reading-just-not-too-much

2025-05-26 15:44:05 UTC

Large-scale projects run the risk of stifling scientific independence. Instead, let’s explore alternative mechanisms of collaboration, writes @nprofile…cvwk.
https://www.thetransmitter.org/funding/neuroscience-needs-to-empower-early-career-researchers-not-fund-moon-shots/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20250526-neuroscience-needs-empower-ECR

2025-05-02 12:09:59 UTC

It took more than a decade to trace the 130,000 connections in a fruit fly's brain. With the map in hand, researchers are turning to the next step in connectomics: building simulations.
By Laura Dattaro
https://www.thetransmitter.org/connectome/connectomics-2-0-simulating-the-brain/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20250502-simulating-the-brain

2025-04-17 18:34:27 UTC

"A 40 percent cut [in the NIH budget] would mean dramatic and immediate changes in the ability of scientists in the United States to conduct their work,” says Joshua Gordon, former director of the National Institute of Mental Health.
By @nprofile…g6r9
https://www.thetransmitter.org/funding/proposed-nih-budget-cut-threatens-massive-destruction-of-american-science/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20250417-NIH-budget-cut-threat-science

2025-04-09 21:54:50 UTC

Researchers who maintain federally funded repositories of human data received an NIH email in March noting that they must comply with a 20 January executive order from President Trump that recognizes only two sexes: male and female.
By @nprofile…g6r9
https://www.thetransmitter.org/policy/u-s-human-data-repositories-under-review-for-gender-identity-descriptors/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20250409-mastodon-USdata-repositories-under-review-for-gender-identity-descriptors

2025-04-08 13:16:09 UTC

Until recently, in-vivo brain imaging has largely been absent from … integrative efforts, limiting the opportunities to contribute our discoveries, theories or vision toward a comprehensive view of brain function, writes Avram Holmes.
https://www.thetransmitter.org/future-of-fmri/to-make-a-meaningful-contribution-to-neuroscience-fmri-must-break-out-of-its-silo/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20250408-contribution-neuroscience-fMRI

2025-04-03 13:21:33 UTC

The reasons for terminating these scientists—who have led work on neuronal migration, the role of dopamine receptors in neuronal signaling and the structure of ion channels, among other areas—remain unclear.
By Sydney Wyatt, @nprofile…g6r9
https://www.thetransmitter.org/science-and-society/u-s-health-agency-purge-includes-10-lab-heads-at-national-institute-of-neurological-disorders-and-stroke/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20250403-10-lab-NIH

2025-04-01 13:56:33 UTC

In studying the brain, we almost always take the neuron’s perspective. But we can gain new insights by reorienting our frame of reference to that of the messages flowing over brain networks, writes Daniel J. Graham.
https://www.thetransmitter.org/neural-coding/its-time-to-examine-neural-coding-from-the-messages-point-of-view/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20250401-examine-neural-coding

2025-02-11 16:43:41 UTC

In honor of today’s International Day of Women and Girls in Science, The Transmitter spoke with eight women neuroscientists leading initiatives that strive to promote women in the field.
https://www.thetransmitter.org/qa/how-eight-initiatives-are-tackling-neurosciences-gender-gap/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20250211-mosaic-thread-women-neuroscience
#WomeninScience #February11
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2025-02-11 15:36:44 UTC

Today marks the 10th annual International Day of Women and Girls in Science initiative to celebrate women in STEM. Here are eight women neuroscientists working toward gender equality in the field.
By Paige Miranda
https://www.thetransmitter.org/qa/how-eight-initiatives-are-tackling-neurosciences-gender-gap/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20250211-women-tackling-gender-gap
#WomeninScience #February11

2025-01-31 22:21:19 UTC

In light of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s U.S. Senate confirmation hearings this week, The Transmitter has rounded up our past coverage of the false association between vaccines and autism.
https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/roundup-the-false-association-between-vaccines-and-autism/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20250131-sp-roundup-false-association-bwt-vaccines

2025-01-30 17:15:58 UTC

The National Institutes of Health has spent about a decade building up neuroscience programs to diversify the field. Recent executive orders cast doubt on whether these will continue to exist.
By @nprofile…g6r9 and Claudia López Lloreda
https://www.thetransmitter.org/funding/neuroscientists-fear-trumps-dei-order-may-tank-diversity-focused-grants/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20250130-rp-trumps-DEI-may-tank-neuro-grants

2025-01-03 19:05:58 UTC

@nprofile…v4qx encourages the neuroscience community to get more involved in public outreach in 2025.
https://www.thetransmitter.org/craft-and-careers/in-your-new-years-resolutions-for-2025-consider-public-outreach/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20250103-resolutions-public-outreach-2029

2024-12-18 17:31:56 UTC

“Thinking about neuroscience: Essays from the field," The Transmitter's first book, features a rich collection of writing from researchers @nprofile…v4qx, Anthony Zador, Sheena Josselyn, Maryann Martone, Joshua Sanes, Anne Churchland, Kevin Mitchell @WiringtheBrain and many more.

2024-11-21 18:43:55 UTC

Daily neuroscience-related posts on Bluesky this week have increased more than 400 percent, on average, compared with October.
By Calli McMurray
https://www.thetransmitter.org/community/huge-influx-of-neuroscientists-migrates-to-bluesky/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20241121-neuroscientsts-migrate-to-bluesky

2024-09-11 13:21:34 UTC

Exciting news! The Transmitter is proud to partner with World Wide Neuro and “Brain Inspired,” furthering our commitment to help neuroscientists stay current and build connections with one another.
Read the full announcement here: https://www.thetransmitter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/The-Transmitter-Partners-With-World-Wide-Neuro-and-Brain-Inspired.pdf
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/119/126/596/262/096/original/9ce5e70d31b099c3.png

2024-09-03 19:01:41 UTC

Our team is looking for an associate news editor with a background or strong interest in neuroscience, cognition and behavior, to write and edit news articles that educate, challenge and inspire our audience of neuroscientists. To apply, please visit: https://simonsfoundation.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/simonsfoundationcareers/job/Associate-News-Editor_R0001667

2024-07-22 13:50:50 UTC

Women are consistently under-cited in neuroscience. Anne Churchland and Felicia Davatolhagh share tools that can help assess citation diversity.
https://www.thetransmitter.org/publishing/women-are-systematically-under-cited-in-neuroscience-new-tools-can-change-that/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20240722-women-under-cited