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Composite of headshots of neuroscience prize winners from 2025.

Top neuroscience prize winners in 2025

The awards recognize lifetime achievements and new discoveries.

By The Transmitter
15 November 2025 | 4 min read
Illustration of a series of shapes, with a few resembling human eyes.

The visual system’s lingering mystery: Connecting neural activity and perception

Figuring out how the brain uses information from visual neurons may require new tools. I asked 10 neuroscientists what experimental and conceptual methods they think we’re missing.

By Grace Lindsay
13 October 2025 | 24 min read
Illustration of synapse-like threads connecting in various ways.

Learning in living mice defies classic synaptic plasticity rule

Donald Hebb’s theory—memorably summarized as “cells that fire together, wire together”—does not explain the shifting hippocampal connections in mice learning to navigate a virtual environment, according to a new study.

By Sydney Wyatt
28 May 2025 | 5 min read
Judit Pungor and Angelique Allen stand in front of a saltwater tank.

Cephalopods, vision’s next frontier

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.

By Calli McMurray
27 May 2025 | 13 min read
Side view of a Tardigrade.

How tiny tardigrades could help tackle systems neuroscience questions

The eight-legged, millimeter-long animals reveal how small nervous systems produce complex behaviors and perceptual abilities, a preprint suggests.

By Dori Grijseels
11 March 2025 | 6 min read
Research image of a mouse brain slice stained in purple and yellow.

Subthalamic plasticity helps mice squelch innate fear responses

When the animals learn that a perceived threat is not dangerous, long-term activity changes in a part of the subthalamus suppress their instinctive fears.

By Sydney Wyatt
6 February 2025 | 5 min read
Image of squirrels on a branch.

NeuroAI and the hidden complexity of agency

As we attempt to build autonomous artificial-intelligence systems, we're discovering that a capability we take for granted in animals may be much more complex than we imagined.

By Anthony Zador
5 February 2025 | 6 min read
Portrait of Yves Fregnac.

In memoriam: Yves Frégnac, influential and visionary French neuroscientist

Frégnac, who died on 18 October at the age of 73, built his career by meeting neuroscience’s complexity straight on.

By Bahar Gholipour
18 December 2024 | 9 min read
Dima Rinberg smells one of the compounds in his lab, looking at camera with a quizzical expression.

Sniffing out the mysteries of olfaction

A background in physics, and his own curiosity, have helped Dmitry Rinberg tackle the complexities of the neuroscience of smell.

By Lina Zeldovich
11 December 2024 | 13 min read
Black-and-white photograph of Bryan W Jones holding a camera and pointing it back at the photographer.

An eye for science: Q&A with Bryan W. Jones

The researcher explains how the beauty of the retina drew him into the vision field and why photography reminds him of the value of that work.

By Angie Voyles Askham
6 December 2024 | 7 min read

Explore more from The Transmitter

complex stack of rectangular prisms.

Neurophysiology data-sharing system faces funding cliff

After the primary grant supporting Neurodata Without Borders ends in March 2026, the platform may no longer be maintained or kept up to date.

By Lauren Schneider
17 November 2025 | 5 min read
Kevin B Marvel.

A change at the top of SfN as neuroscientists gather in San Diego

Kevin B. Marvel, longtime head of the American Astronomical Society, will lead the Society for Neuroscience after a year of uncertainty in the neuroscience field.

By Natalia Mesa
16 November 2025 | 6 min read
Two hands hold a paper airplane.

How will neuroscience training need to change in the future?

Training in computational neuroscience, data science and statistics will need to expand, say many of the scientists we surveyed. But that must be balanced with a more traditional grounding in the scientific method and critical thinking. Researchers noted that funding concerns will also affect training, especially for people from underrepresented groups.

By The Transmitter
15 November 2025 | 11 min read

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