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Jan 24, 2025 | 
thetransmitter.org | Sydney Wyatt |Emily Willingham |Anne West |Angie Voyles Askham
When Floyd Bloom was in high school in the early 1950s, he took an aptitude test, and the results suggested he would excel at jobs in communication, such as journalism or advertising. But that was not what his family envisioned for him. His father, who had wanted to be a doctor himself and who revered the profession, pushed for medical school.
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Oct 8, 2024 | 
thetransmitter.org | Jill Adams |Holly Barker |Emily Willingham |Paul Middlebrooks
Here is a roundup of autism-related news and research spotted around the web for the week of 7 October. Contributing writer Share this article: Tags: Spectrum, Autism, Science and society, Spotted Aggression, often seen in people with autism and developmental conditions, appears to peak in school-age children and is more likely to occur in those with more autism traits and lower verbal and nonverbal IQ scores, according to a longitudinal study.
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Oct 3, 2024 | 
thetransmitter.org | Holly Barker |Jill Adams |Emily Willingham |Matthew G. Perich
Despite the huge variation in how autistic people experience the condition, they can be divided into just four subgroups, according to a preprint. The people in these groups—who share similar traits and life outcomes—carry gene variants that implicate distinct biological pathways, the researchers found. Each group is associated with specific genetic variants that influence gene expression at different stages of development, the investigation revealed.
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Sep 27, 2024 | 
thetransmitter.org | Paul Middlebrooks |Brady Huggett |Emily Willingham
The classic story of dopamine’s role in learning is related to reward prediction errors—dopamine is modulated when you expect a reward and don’t get it, and when you don’t expect a reward but do get it. Vijay Mohan K. Namboodiri, assistant professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco, calls this a prospective account of dopamine function because it requires an animal to look into the future to expect a reward.
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Sep 27, 2024 | 
thetransmitter.org | Paul Middlebrooks |Shaena Montanari |Emily Willingham |Calli McMurray
Recent articles This podcast, hosted by Paul Middlebrooks, features in-depth conversations with neuroscientists studying natural and artificial intelligence, philosophy, consciousness and other related areas. Get notified every time a new episode is released.
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Sep 26, 2024 | 
thetransmitter.org | Nancy Padilla-Coreano |Paul Middlebrooks |Shaena Montanari |Emily Willingham
Nancy Padilla-Coreano is assistant professor of neuroscience at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Her research explores how the brain enables humans and animals to navigate complex social dynamics and how this ability is disrupted in disease states. Padilla-Coreano uses behavioral assays, multisite electrophysiology and artificial intelligence to identify the neural dynamics behind social competency in mouse models.
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Sep 13, 2024 | 
thetransmitter.org | Angie Voyles Askham |Mark Humphries |Paul Middlebrooks |Emily Willingham
A major question in systems neuroscience concerns dopamine’s computational function during learning. The most influential framework addressing this question is the reward prediction error (RPE) model of dopamine function, which is based on temporal difference reinforcement learning (TDRL). RPE is defined as received minus predicted “value,” in which value for every moment is roughly the total expected future rewards.
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Nov 6, 2023 | 
thetransmitter.org | Emily Willingham |Nancy Padilla-Coreano |Paul Middlebrooks |Shaena Montanari
Science writer Spectrum Emily writes frequently about autism and related issues, and her work has appeared in print or online at Discover, New York Times, Slate, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and others. Emily has a B.A. in English with minors in German and History and a Ph.D. in biological sciences, both from The University of Texas at Austin.
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Oct 30, 2023 | 
mercurynews.com | Emily Willingham
The first report of giant sunfish remains on a Point Reyes beach emerged via Instagram, where a local Marin feed posted the picture. News outlets picked up the story, expanding it to explain that the 6-foot animal with its deceptively nonhydrodynamic-looking shape was not just your average mola mola sunfish but instead was a rare mola tecta, or hoodwinker sunfish.
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Oct 29, 2023 | 
marinij.com | Emily Willingham
The first report of giant sunfish remains on a Point Reyes beach emerged via Instagram, where a local Marin feed posted the picture. News outlets picked up the story, expanding it to explain that the 6-foot animal with its deceptively nonhydrodynamic-looking shape was not just your average mola mola sunfish but instead was a rare mola tecta, or hoodwinker sunfish.
