Hope Vanderberg

Copy chief
The Transmitter

Hope Vanderberg edits articles on The Transmitter for grammar, style and accuracy. Hope began copyediting for the Simons Foundation in 2010 as a freelancer and joined the Spectrum staff in 2013. Before that, she was editor of New Youth Connections, a teen-written magazine based in New York City. She also worked as senior projects editor at Medscape from WebMD.

Education

M.A. in science journalism, New York University
B.A. in biology, Earlham College

Explore more from The Transmitter

Neural dynamics

By Alex Williams

17 August 2026

7 min read

Two trajectories cross over each other showing areas of alignment and misalignment.

Mind over metrics: How can we tell if two brains (or AI models) are alike?

The ability to record from large populations of neurons has triggered the development of myriad methods for comparing them. But we’re still grappling with how to convert measures of likeness into a better mechanistic understanding.

Neural dynamics

Mind over metrics: How can we tell if two brains (or AI models) are alike?

By Alex Williams

17 August 2026 | 7 min read

This paper changed my life

By Noelia Weisstaub

14 August 2026

5 min read

Mice playing, engaged in learning and memory: some of their brains are yellow, and some are red, matching a red and yellow legend that runs through the image to underscore both memory and learning.

This paper changed my life: A technical breakthrough for memory studies

In a 2007 Science paper, Mark Mayford and his colleagues found that some neurons activated during learning are also recruited during memory retrieval. Noelia Weisstaub shares how this study and others drove an era of great progress in tool development.

This paper changed my life