Blog

Is the grass greener? Exploring how the brain decides when to move on

How do you decide whether to persist with what you’re doing or switch to something else? Neuroscientists believe that the answer to this question may lie in a canonical computation in the brain that guides behaviour under uncertainty. To explore this possibility, SWC Senior Research Fellow Dr Michael Bukwich has been studying how animals allocate more time to foraging in locations where they can acquire more resources.

17 September 2025
Q&A

Ready, set, go

You never forget how to ride a bike. But how does the brain store these kinds of memories? And how do new skills not overwrite older ones? These questions are driving the work of Dr Nuo Li, Associate Professor of Neurobiology at Duke University. In this Q&A, Li talks about his work and its implications for understanding how we learn new skills, and his hopes for helping people with movement disorders.

25 September 2025
Young children riding bikes, overlaid with "SWC Speaker Series"
Q&A

What can rodent societies teach us about our own? Insights from neuroscience

What can rodent societies reveal about the neural basis of social decision-making? In this Q&A, SWC Seminar speaker Dr Gowan Tervo discusses his innovative research using “Rat City” to explore how animals make decisions in complex social environments. 

22 September 2025
Blog

Working memory representations: practice makes perfect

From recalling a shopping list to remembering a six-digit activation code, we rely on our working memory every day. Surprisingly, the mechanisms underpinning this ability are not well understood. During a seminar at SWC, Professor Peyman Golshani presented his latest research into how working memory is represented in the brain during learning.

15 September 2025