Blog

Place cells fire when an animal enters a specific location. But what happens when an animal just thinks of a location, rather than physically visits the spot? This presents a significant challenge for neuroscientists. SWC PhD student Tom George was determined to help find a way to trace the brain’s “real” tuning curves. Working with colleagues across SWC, the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit and UCL, the team developed a new method called SIMPL.

Confidence comes in many forms. Imagine you are lying in bed, and you think you might smell something burning. While you might not be confident about the smell, you are confident you should get up to check. Research led by SWC Group Leader Dr Jeffrey C. Erlich and NYU graduate student Xiaoyue Zhu set out to disentangle the neural mechanisms underlying these different kinds of confidence. 

Football is adored by fans all around the world. But what makes “the beautiful game” so captivating? Is it the interactive nature, the uncertainty of the outcome, or the complexity of the strategy? All of these elements enticed researchers at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre to study embodied multi-agent decision-making in a dynamically changing world.

SWC researchers have developed a new method, hamFISH, to link gene expression with neuronal connectivity and activity. Using hamFISH they profiled the mouse medial amygdala in unprecedented detail to understand how specific cell types drive behaviour.

We asked staff at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre and the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit about their careers, and what it means to them to be a woman in science.