Academia

Recent articles

Illustration of a sheet of paper with many holes punched out of it.

Let’s teach neuroscientists how to be thoughtful and fair reviewers

Blanco-Suárez revamped the traditional journal club by developing a course in which students peer review preprints alongside the published papers that evolved from them.

By Elena Blanco-Suárez
6 March 2026 | 6 min read
Sam Wang.

Is there a neuroscientist in the House?

Sam Wang, a neuroscientist running for the U.S. House of Representatives, has been considering American democracy for decades.

By Lauren Schenkman
25 February 2026 | 7 min read
Curvy lines link brain scans and a world map.

BRAIN Initiative researchers ‘dream big’ amid shifts in leadership, funding

But whether the initiative’s road map for the next decade is feasible remains an open question.

By Claudia López Lloreda
23 January 2026 | 6 min read
Nachum Ulanovsky sits against a black background with one bat in his hands and another with its wings spread above his head.

Neuroscience’s leaders, legacies and rising stars of 2025

Here are seven stories from the past year about some of the field’s most engaging figures.

By The Transmitter
24 December 2025 | 2 min read
Overlapping speech bubbles.

Talking shop: The Transmitter’s top quotes of 2025

Find out what “may be one of the brain’s most underappreciated superpowers” and why it’s so crucial to “talk about our research in our everyday lives.”

By The Transmitter
24 December 2025 | 4 min read
Two hands hold a paper airplane.

How will neuroscience training need to change in the future?

Training in computational neuroscience, data science and statistics will need to expand, say many of the scientists we surveyed. But that must be balanced with a more traditional grounding in the scientific method and critical thinking. Researchers noted that funding concerns will also affect training, especially for people from underrepresented groups.

By The Transmitter
15 November 2025 | 11 min read
Stack of papers.

What are the most-cited neuroscience papers from the past 30 years?

Highly cited papers reflect the surge in artificial-intelligence research in the field and other technical advances, plus prizewinning work on analgesics, the fusiform face area and ion channels.

By The Transmitter
15 November 2025 | 11 min read
Glasses with a pie chart in one of the lenses.

How have funding cuts affected early-career scientists’ futures?

Some say they feel terrified and anxious over all the uncertainty; many are thinking about leaving the United States, academia or science altogether; others plan to stay the course.

By The Transmitter
15 November 2025 | 9 min read
Aerial view of a house isolated on an iceberg.

Is neuroscience a coherent field? Or is it becoming more fragmented?

The latter, say about half of the neuroscientists we surveyed. They note the sheer volume of research being generated, an increasing trend toward specialization in neuroscience education, and competition among labs. About another quarter told us it is “becoming much more interconnected.”

By The Transmitter
15 November 2025 | 9 min read

Explore more from The Transmitter

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
DNA strand

Exon-skipping approach boosts levels of key Rett syndrome protein

Deleting a small region of the MECP2 gene partially restored function in neurons derived from people with Rett-associated variants.

By Giorgia Guglielmi
20 March 2026 | 5 min read
Collage with a portrait of Caitlin Vander Weele in the foreground.

Frameshift: How Caitlin Vander Weele made science communication her business

Her favorite part of research was talking about it. So she left academia and turned that passion into a successful company.

By Katie Moisse
19 March 2026 | 6 min read