The Transmitter: Neuroscience News and Perspectives
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Ant olfactory neurons reveal new ‘transcriptional shield’ mechanism of gene regulation
The visual system’s lingering mystery: Connecting neural activity and perception
New questions around motor neurons and plasticity
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Nikolay Kukushkin discusses his book, ‘One Hand Clapping: Unraveling the Mystery of the Human Mind’
Autism researchers ‘pleasantly surprised’ by list of NIH data project grantees, despite initial concerns
Today’s action potentials
”These kinds of studies hint at a much more complex and less intuitive mechanism for turning visual information into action than is generally appreciated. — GRACE LINDSAY, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY AND DATA SCIENCE, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
Upcoming Webinars
Memory Decoding Journal Club: Functional connectomics revea…
NF1 exon 51 alternative splicing: functional implications i…
Organization of thalamic networks and mechanisms of dysfunc…
One year of FlyWire: How the resource is redefining Drosophila research
Why we need basic science to better understand the neurobiology of psychedelics
Reproducibility is a team sport: Lessons from a large-scale collaboration
Beyond Newtonian causation in neuroscience: Embracing complex causality
Boosting SCN2A expression reduces seizures in mice
Meet the Autism Data Science Initiative grantees
Autism researchers ‘pleasantly surprised’ by list of NIH data project grantees, despite initial concerns
NIH awarded 37 percent fewer neuroscience-related grants in 2025 than in past years
International scientific collaboration is more necessary—yet more challenging—than ever
Building the future of neuroscience at HBCUs
Should neuroscientists ‘vibe code’?
What U.S. science stands to lose without international graduate students and postdoctoral researchers
How to build a truly global computational neuroscience community
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.
The last two-author neuroscience paper?
Author lists on papers have ballooned, and it’s getting hard to discern contribution.
This paper changed my life: Dan Goodman on a paper that reignited the field of spiking neural networks
This paper changed my life: Victoria Abraira on a tasty link between circuits and behavior
From bench to bot: Why AI-powered writing may not deliver on its promise
Keeping it personal: How to preserve your voice when using AI
Exclusive: Who is Richard Frye, the neurologist who researches and advocates for leucovorin as an autism treatment?
Frye has led two placebo-controlled trials of the folate supplement in autistic people; the first was suspended by regulators, and the other has yet to be published.
Facial movements telegraph cognition in mice
Michael Breakspear and Mac Shine explain how brain processing changes across neural population scales
Everything everywhere all at once: Decision-making signals engage entire brain
The Transmitter’s reading list: Six upcoming neuroscience books, plus notable titles in 2025
‘What Is Intelligence?’: An excerpt
‘Bird Brains and Behavior,’ an excerpt
‘Elusive Cures: Why Neuroscience Hasn’t Solved Brain Disorders—and How We Can Change That,’ an excerpt
Emotion research has a communication conundrum
In 2025, the words we use to describe emotions matter, but their definitions are controversial. Here, I unpack the different positions in this space and the rationales behind them—and I invite 13 experts to chime in.
Accepting “the bitter lesson” and embracing the brain’s complexity
To gain insight into complex neural data, we must move toward a data-driven regime, training large models on vast amounts of information. We asked nine experts on computational neuroscience and neural data analysis to weigh in.