Mark Humphries

1 month ago | thetransmitter.org | Calli McMurray |Benjamin Young |Jill Adams |Mark Humphries

Olfactory neuroscientists have known for a while that their stimuli stink. In many experiments, lab animals inhale puffs of a single strong odorant for only a few seconds at a time, an experience that “likely bears little resemblance—either in concentration or in form—to the ways in which animals naturalistically interact with odors,” says Sandeep Robert Datta, professor of neurobiology at Harvard University.

1 month ago | thetransmitter.org | Katie Moisse |Laura Dattaro |Tyler Sloan |Mark Humphries

Contributing editor The Transmitter Share this article: Tags: Connectome, Artificial intelligence, Axons, Calcium imaging, Cellular neuroscience, Circuits, Connectivity, Dendrites, Excitatory signaling, Inhibitory signaling, Interneurons, Machine learning, Microscopy, Neural circuits, Synapses, Synaptic plasticity, Visual cortex The most comprehensive map to date of cell structure and function in the mouse cortex reveals a previously unappreciated level of coordination among inhibitory...

2 months ago | thetransmitter.org | Daniel Graham |Holly Barker |Mark Humphries |Anthony M. Zador

To say that the brain is a communication device is almost cliché. The very name of this publication—The Transmitter—testifies to the ubiquity of the analogy. Yet most models of the brain take a sharply limited view of what communication in the brain really entails. Though couched in terms of networks and information, current approaches in systems neuroscience tend to view the brain from the point of view of the neuron.

2 months ago | thetransmitter.org | Calli McMurray |Mark Humphries |Olivia Gieger

Whenever William Smith runs a calcium imaging experiment, he spends 40 minutes staring at a screen. “It gives you a lot of reflective and contemplative time to think about what’s going on,” says Smith, a graduate student in Stefan Pulver’s lab at the University of St Andrews. During these reflections, Smith says he started to wonder how much energy he was using, and in turn how much carbon that released into the atmosphere. So he decided to find out.

2 months ago | thetransmitter.org | Mark Humphries |Grace Lindsay |Ben Scott |Anthony M. Zador

There are many ways neuroscience could end. Prosaically, society may just lose interest. Of all the ways we can use our finite resources, studying the brain has only recently become one; it may one day return to dust. Other things may take precedence, like feeding the planet or preventing an asteroid strike. Or neuroscience may end as an incidental byproduct, one of the consequences of war or of thoughtlessly disassembling a government or of being sideswiped by a chunk of space rock.