Headshot of Niko McCarty.

Niko McCarty

Former data reporter
Spectrum

Niko McCarty was Spectrum’s data reporter from 2021 to 2022. He has an M.A. from New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program. He also has an M.Res. in systems and synthetic biology from Imperial College London, where he was a Fulbright Scholar, and an M.Sc. in bioengineering from the California Institute of Technology. His prior research focused on engineered microbial communities and building CRISPR-Cas technologies.

From this contributor

Explore more from The Transmitter

Mouse wearing a white, cube-like device on its head.

WILD platform levels up ability to record brain activity, behavior in nature

The customizable rig combines multimodal recording, onboard processing and neuronal manipulation to power more complex experiments.

By Simon Makin
29 October 2026 | 6 min read

The relationship between structure and function in cortical networks

Michael Reimann explains how the shape of neurons puts strong constraints on how they are wired in a network, and how this affects their structure-function relationships.

By Gaute Einevoll
28 October 2026 | 138 min listen
Stock image of branching dendrites.

How brains prevent ‘catastrophic forgetting’

Dendrite-specific inhibition lets overlapping neuronal assemblies form across brain areas without erasing existing memories, a new modeling study suggests.

By Natalia Mesa
28 October 2026 | 6 min read