Hindsight is 2020: The year in review

Recent articles

top-down view of the mouse brain

2020 in research images

Feast your eyes on glowing glia and organoids; high-resolution, digital renditions of mouse brains; fluorescent beads passing through zebrafish guts and more.

By Spectrum
23 December 2020 | 2 min read
researcher facing off with the coronavirus.

Rewind: Spectrum’s best from 2020

Our staff picks the stories, podcasts and special reports that stood out from the rest this past year.

By Spectrum
23 December 2020 | 5 min read
Lab scene during COVID 19 pandemic.

Inside the reporter’s notebook: Dispatches from 2020

Spectrum's staff couldn't report on the ground this year — with no lab visits, sit-down interviews or in-person conferences to attend — but we observed a lot of changes from our computer screens.

By Spectrum
23 December 2020 | 4 min read
Micrograph of nerve cells being targeted by CRISPR enzyme to activate the silenced gene in Angelman syndrome

Hot topics in autism research, 2020

The Spectrum team highlights five topics that distinguished autism research in 2020: diversity in data, gene therapies, subtyping, social circuitry and the ‘autism gene’ debate.

By Spectrum
23 December 2020 | 8 min read
White lab mouse sitting in a gloved hand.

Notable papers in autism research, 2020

Gene therapies and the factors influencing autism traits top Spectrum’s list of the 10 most notable research findings we covered in 2020.

By Spectrum
23 December 2020 | 4 min read

Explore more from The Transmitter

Research image of inputs into a single neuron in the mouse visual cortex.

‘Unbelievably beautiful’ evidence extends Nobel Prize-winning model of vision

Orientation tuning—the ability to distinguish a horizontal line from a vertical one or something in between—originates in the visual cortex, according to new mouse synapse imaging experiments.

By Claudia López Lloreda
29 May 2026 | 5 min read
Illustration of people connecting basic science.

Bringing basic biology back to INSAR

As the International Society for Autism Research has grown over the past two decades, basic science has become less central, Christine Wu Nordahl says. This year, she and other meeting organizers aimed to change that.

By Diana Kwon
28 May 2026 | 6 min read
Illustration of scale balancing Petri dish and test tubes.

Every neuroscience lab needs an ethicist

The ethics issues that arise in neuroscience research are usually novel, unresolved and understudied. Embedding ethicists in labs helps scientists navigate these challenges and develop strategies in real time to prevent harm.

By Timothy E. Brown
27 May 2026 | 5 min read