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In-depth analysis of important topics in neuroscience

Illustration of a paper draft covered in notes and sign-off signatures, and surrounded by many hands reaching towards it.

The last two-author neuroscience paper?

Author lists on papers have ballooned, and it’s getting hard to discern contribution.

By Lydia Denworth
25 February 2025 | 3 min read
A figure walks a narrow path in a canyon.

Static pay, shrinking prospects fuel neuroscience postdoc decline

Postdoctoral researchers sponsored by the National Institutes of Health now toil longer than ever before, for less money. They are responding accordingly.

By Katie Moisse
31 January 2025 | 20 min read
Illustration of a lab with a smoking crater in the middle of the floor.

A scientific fraud. An investigation. A lab in recovery.

Science is built on trust. What happens when someone destroys it?

By Calli McMurray
4 October 2024 | 27 min listen
Research image of green and purple mouse brain slices.

Putting a bright idea to the test

A surprising wave of findings in mice suggests that light and sound flickering at 40 hertz clears the brain of Alzheimer’s-disease-linked plaques. Several companies are hoping to prove it works in people.

By Shaena Montanari
21 August 2024 | 11 min read
an illustration of scientists parachuting

The perils of parachute research

Scientists who study autism in lower-income countries are working to end practices that exploit or ignore collaborators and communities on the ground.

By Linda Nordling
6 June 2024 | 11 min read
Illustration of a series of squares containing distinct patterns.

Can an emerging field called ‘neural systems understanding’ explain the brain?

This mashup of neuroscience, artificial intelligence and even linguistics and philosophy of mind aims to crack the deep question of what "understanding" is, however un-brain-like its models may be.

By George Musser
5 June 2024 | 21 min listen
Close-up of a green glass slide embedded with dozens of tiny electrodes.

Making cancer nervous

Nerve cells in the brain and throughout the body can turbocharge tumor growth — a finding that not only expands conventional ideas about the nervous system but points to novel therapeutic targets for a range of malignancies.

By Sarah DeWeerdt
13 November 2023 | 25 min listen
Photograph of a gloved hand pointing to a computer screen that is displaying an image of a mouse brain.

Uncertainty and excitement surround one company’s cell therapy for epilepsy

After 10 years of work, Neurona may have the data to quiet its skeptics. But its ongoing clinical trial will be the ultimate test.

By Angie Voyles Askham
5 October 2023 | 20 min listen
Research video of a zebrafish larva (zoomed in on the gut) being given glucose.

On the periphery: Thinking ‘outside the brain’ offers new ideas about autism

Neuronal alterations outside the brain may help to explain a host of the condition’s characteristic traits, including sensory changes, gut problems and motor differences.

By Sarah DeWeerdt
13 April 2023 | 20 min read
Coraline with her family at home in Pennsylvania.

The promise of telehealth in autism diagnoses

The COVID-19 pandemic forced a reckoning, in which autism clinicians had to redefine best practices and expand how children are evaluated. The remote assessments they developed may help solve a persistent problem: the long wait families endure to get a diagnosis in the United States.

By Lydia Denworth
15 February 2023 | 22 min read

Explore more from The Transmitter

Photograph of the BRIDGE team and students visiting a laboratory.

Sharing Africa’s brain data: Q&A with Amadi Ihunwo

These data are “virtually mandatory” to advance neuroscience, says Ihunwo, a co-investigator of the Brain Research International Data Governance & Exchange (BRIDGE) initiative, which seeks to develop a global framework for sharing, using and protecting neuroscience data.

By Lauren Schenkman
20 May 2025 | 6 min read
Research image of neurite overgrowth in cells grown from people with autism-linked PPP2R5D variants.

Cortical structures in infants linked to future language skills; and more

Here is a roundup of autism-related news and research spotted around the web for the week of 19 May.

By Jill Adams
20 May 2025 | 2 min read
Digitally distorted building blocks.

The BabyLM Challenge: In search of more efficient learning algorithms, researchers look to infants

A competition that trains language models on relatively small datasets of words, closer in size to what a child hears up to age 13, seeks solutions to some of the major challenges of today’s large language models.

By Alona Fyshe
19 May 2025 | 7 min read