Headshot of Kat McGowan.

Kat McGowan

Contributing Editor
The Transmitter

Kat McGowan is a freelance writer and editor based in the Bay Area. She edits Deep Dive articles for The Transmitter.

Previously a special projects editor at Discover magazine and a senior editor at Psychology Today, she writes for a range of digital and  print publications, most recently Wired, Nautilus, Aeon, Genome and Slate. She writes about neuroscience, genetics, psychology and other ideas about who we are as people and as a species. Her Discover cover story about the failures of memory, “Out of the Past,” was selected for “Best American Science and Nature Writing” in 2010.

Explore more from The Transmitter

Are computational complexity principles relevant for explaining brain activity?

Cristopher Moore discusses the nature of computation and whether we should think of neural activity as computing.

By Paul Middlebrooks
17 June 2026 | 1 min read
Illustration of cells converting from fibroblasts to myoblasts.

This paper changed my life: Learning the molecular rules of cell identity

A 1987 Cell paper showed that a single transcription factor could turn fibroblasts into muscle cells. The work inspired Ardem Patapoutian to think about the molecular codes that define neuronal subtypes.

By Ardem Patapoutian
17 June 2026 | 6 min read

Leucovorin saga, and more

Here is a roundup of autism-related news and research spotted around the web for the week of 15 June.

By Jill Adams
16 June 2026 | 2 min read