Viviane Callier is a freelance science journalist based in Maryland. She has written for Quanta, Scientific American, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, and other publications. She was a Churchill Scholar at the University of Cambridge, where she studied zoology, and she has a Ph.D. in biology from Duke University.
Viviane Callier
Science writer
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For decades, scientists have been teased by the strange but inaccessible cephalopod visual system. Now, thanks to a technological breakthrough from a lab in Oregon, data are finally coming straight from the octopus brain.
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27 May 2025 | 14 min listen
Keith Hengen and Woodrow Shew explore criticality and cognition
The two discuss their evolving views of brain criticality as a central organizing principle of cognition, development and learning.
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The two discuss their evolving views of brain criticality as a central organizing principle of cognition, development and learning.
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Paul Middlebrooks
16 July 2025 | 94 min listen
Body state, sensory signals commingle in mouse whisker cortex
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Body state, sensory signals commingle in mouse whisker cortex
The new study challenges a long-held view that the barrel cortex exclusively encodes sensory signals from the whiskers.
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Claudia López Lloreda
6 August 2025 | 6 min listen