Emma Bryce is a freelance journalist and editor based in London. Her work has appeared in publications including The Guardian, WIRED Magazine UK, Audubon Magazine, TED Education, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Slate, and Yale360. She’s written about everything from birds and oil rigs, to wave farms, insect consumption, and egg thieves. On her Guardian blog, World on a Plate, she also covers a range of issues relating to food and the environment. For TED Education, she edits scripts that get turned into animated videos.
Emma Bryce
Freelance writer
From this contributor
Advancing early interventions for autism
Some therapies use play and other activities to reinforce skills that autistic children often find challenging. Trials show these methods can change a child’s trajectory for the better, but the evidence base remains thin.
How the striatum is linked to autism
The repetitive behaviors seen in autism may originate in the striatum, a cluster of neurons involved with initiating and executing movements.
Repetitive behaviors and autism
New thinking about repetitive behaviors suggests they provide stress relief and fun for autistic people; as such, these behaviors deserve careful management.
How autism’s definition has changed over time
Don’t judge this book by its decidedly dull cover: Across its pages, some of the most dramatic changes in the history of autism have played out. This short animation chronicles how a diagnostic manual has defined and redefined autism over the years.
How autism’s definition has changed over time
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.