The Transmitter: Neuroscience News and Perspectives
Featured
Microglia in hypothalamus help kick-start puberty
By
Helena Kudiabor
6 May 2026 | 0 min watch
Spectrum
Advances in genetic medicine took center stage at INSAR
By
Alison Singer
5 May 2026 | 4 min read
Ehud Ahissar offers a new kind of dualism for neuroscience
By
Paul Middlebrooks
6 May 2026 | 102 min listen
Latest
From bench to bot
Why expertise won’t protect you from AI’s influence
By
Tim Requarth
4 May 2026 | 6 min read
Machine learning
Can AI do neuroscience without understanding?
By
Anthony Zador
27 April 2026 | 6 min read
Spectrum
At 25, INSAR needs to bring autism scientists together more than ever
By
Brian Boyd
22 April 2026 | 5 min read
To understand decision-making, we need to truly challenge lab animals
By
Chand Chandrasekaran
20 April 2026 | 6 min read
— TOMASZ NOWAKOWSKI, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF NEUROLOGICAL SURGERY, ANATOMY AND PSYCHIATRY, AND OF BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES, THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO Read more
Spectrum logo
Advances in genetic medicine took center stage at INSAR
By
Alison Singer
5 May 2026 | 4 min read
Spectrum
‘Slightly unhinged’ federal autism meeting portends unclear research priorities
By
Daisy Yuhas
7 May 2026 | 4 min read
Policy
European Research Council backtracks on stricter grant resubmission rules
By
Lauren Schenkman
1 May 2026 | 4 min read
Policy
Scientists push back against stricter European Research Council grant application rules
By
Lauren Schenkman
29 April 2026 | 5 min read
Policy
What neuroscientists want from a new NINDS director
By
Helena Kudiabor
15 April 2026 | 4 min read
Frameshift: How Mia Thomaidou tapped a fellowship to connect neuroscience to criminal justice
By
Katie Moisse
21 April 2026 | 6 min read
Frameshift: How Caitlin Vander Weele made science communication her business
By
Katie Moisse
19 March 2026 | 6 min read
David Sussillo on persistence, luck and the bonds between life and work
By
Francisco J. Rivera Rosario, David Sussillo
17 March 2026 | 7 min watch
Brain imaging
A brief history of precision self-scanning
When a researcher solved a logistical problem by going rogue, the idea proved remarkably infectious.
By
Lauren Gravitz
21 January 2026 | 13 min read
Neuroscience
The state of neuroscience in 2025: An overview
The Transmitter presents a portrait of the field through four lenses: its focus, its output, its people and its funding.
By
The Transmitter
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15 November 2025 | 4 min read
Methods
What a bird’s-eye view of half a million papers reveals about neuroscience
By
Mac Shine
6 April 2026 | 36 min watch
Retraction
Researchers retract multisensory learning paper after failed replications
By
Calli McMurray
31 March 2026 | 4 min read
Lack of reviewers threatens robustness of neuroscience literature
By
Jakob Voigts
2 March 2026 | 14 min read
Books
The Transmitter’s most-read neuroscience book excerpts of 2025
By
The Transmitter
24 December 2025 | 2 min read
Early-career researchers
The Transmitter ’s Rising Stars of Neuroscience 2025
We recognize the outstanding achievements of 25 neuroscientists who stand to shape the field for years to come.
By
Francisco J. Rivera Rosario, Lauren Schneider
15 November 2025 | 23 min read
Community
The Transmitter’s New Lab Directory
By
Francisco J. Rivera Rosario
15 November 2025 | 21 min read
Diving in with Nachum Ulanovsky
By
Claudia López Lloreda
16 October 2025 | 14 min read
Error equation predicts brain’s ability to generalize
By
Natalia Mesa
10 April 2026 | 5 min read
Systems neuroscience
‘Digital sphinx’ raises questions about connectome models
By
Natalia Mesa
2 April 2026 | 5 min read
Spatial cognition and navigation
Head direction cells stably orient mice to outside world
By
Angie Voyles Askham
25 March 2026 | 0 min watch
Hippocampus builds reputation as ‘general-purpose statistical learning machine’
By
Natalia Mesa
10 March 2026 | 5 min read
‘The Brain, In Theory,’ an excerpt
By
Romain Brette
7 April 2026 | 5 min read
‘The Fox, the Shrew, and You: How Brains Evolved,’ an excerpt
By
Rogier Mars
10 March 2026 | 6 min read
‘Wired for Words: The Neural Architecture of Language,’ an excerpt
By
Gregory Hickok
2 December 2025 | 8 min read
The big picture
Trading places: What happens when neuroscience turns into machine learning, and machine learning turns into neuroscience?
Neuroscience has become increasingly concerned with prediction, and machine learning with causal explanation, with each field adopting methods from the other. I asked eight experts to weigh in on what we stand to learn from this exchange.
By
Samuel Gershman
23 March 2026 | 22 min read
The big picture
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
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13 October 2025 | 24 min read