Daniel Liévano
Illustrator
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Pooling data points to new potential treatment for spinal cord injury
By gathering raw data from multiple labs, we identified an overlooked predictor of recovery after spinal cord injury. Many more insights remain trapped in scattered data.
We found a major flaw in a scientific reagent used in thousands of neuroscience experiments — and we’re trying to fix it.
As part of that ambition, we launched a public-private partnership to systematically evaluate antibodies used to study neurological disease, and we plan to make all the data freely available.
Simply making data publicly available isn’t enough. We need to make it easy — that requires community buy-in.
I helped create a standard to make it easy to upload, analyze and compare functional MRI data. An ecosystem of tools has since grown up around it, boosting reproducibility and speeding up research.
Incentivizing data-sharing in neuroscience: How about a little customer service?
To make data truly reusable, we need to invest in data curators, who help people enter the information into repositories.

Incentivizing data-sharing in neuroscience: How about a little customer service?
Explore more from The Transmitter
Null and Noteworthy: Neurons tracking sequences don’t fire in order
Instead, neurons encode the position of sequential items in working memory based on when they fire during ongoing brain wave oscillations—a finding that challenges a long-standing theory.

Null and Noteworthy: Neurons tracking sequences don’t fire in order
Instead, neurons encode the position of sequential items in working memory based on when they fire during ongoing brain wave oscillations—a finding that challenges a long-standing theory.
How to teach this paper: ‘Neurotoxic reactive astrocytes are induced by activated microglia,’ by Liddelow et al. (2017)
Shane Liddelow and his collaborators identified the factors that transform astrocytes from their helpful to harmful form. Their work is a great choice if you want to teach students about glial cell types, cell culture, gene expression or protein measurement.

How to teach this paper: ‘Neurotoxic reactive astrocytes are induced by activated microglia,’ by Liddelow et al. (2017)
Shane Liddelow and his collaborators identified the factors that transform astrocytes from their helpful to harmful form. Their work is a great choice if you want to teach students about glial cell types, cell culture, gene expression or protein measurement.
Astrocytes sense neuromodulators to orchestrate neuronal activity and shape behavior
Astrocytes serve as crucial mediators of neuromodulatory processes previously attributed to direct communication between neurons, four new studies show.

Astrocytes sense neuromodulators to orchestrate neuronal activity and shape behavior
Astrocytes serve as crucial mediators of neuromodulatory processes previously attributed to direct communication between neurons, four new studies show.