Q&A

Searching for sleep neurons

The question of why we sleep has puzzled people for many years. In the process of studying how we sleep and what controls sleep, Professor Yang Dan is beginning to shed light on what function sleep really serves. In the following interview Professor Dan outlines her search for sleep neurons.

19 December 2018
Sexual dimorphism in VMHvl
Q&A

Neural mechanisms of aggression

5 December 2018
Q&A

Perception bias: exploring physiological needs

“Hunger makes a thief of any man” — this thought-provoking quotation from Pearl S. Buck captivatingly introduced Dr Yoav Livneh’s work on how physiological need states affect perception in his recent Emerging Neuroscientists Seminar Series (ENSS) lecture.

22 November 2018
Q&A

Supporting adaptive changes in sound processing

Flexibility of the auditory cortex is key to enabling highly dynamic responses to sounds. I caught up with Andrea Hasenstaub to discuss her work combining in vivo and in vitro recordings with computational models to uncover how interactions between numerous cortical cell types support adaptive changes in sound processing.

19 November 2018
Q&A

Learning from reward and punishment

Animals learn to survive by reinforcing their successes, but how does the brain achieve this? Adam Kepecs, Professor and Chair of Neuroscience Program at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, outlines his research on a cortical circuit for reinforcement learning mediated by a type of inhibitory neuron.

13 November 2018
Odour molecules
Q&A

Detecting, discriminating and generalising odours

How does the brain allow us to achieve two seemingly competitive tasks: telling odors apart and knowing that different smells are related to each other?

24 October 2018
Ground Floor Lecture Theatre
Q&A

Elucidating the role of local interneurons in fear leaning

While the functional role and plasticity mechanisms of projection neurons during associative learning have been extensively studied, to date, little is known about the contributions of local interneurons.

18 October 2018
Hippocampus neurons
Q&A

The hippocampus: a predictive map?

Kim Stachenfeld outlines how a representation learning approach has shown that the hippocampus may act as a predictive map for more general sorts of information.

8 October 2018
Research image - Graziana Gatto
Q&A

Uncovering the logic of spinal circuits

In the inaugural lecture of the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre Emerging Neuroscientists Seminar Series (ENSS), Dr Graziana Gatto...

5 October 2018
Image of the cortex and cerebellum - Adam Hantman
Q&A

Neural circuits of dexterity

Dr Adam Hantman describes his work to understand the neural elements responsible for dexterous motor control

3 October 2018
Graziana Gatto
Seminar

2018 Emerging Neuroscientists Seminar Series Winners Announced

23 August 2018
Beaker experiment
Q&A

Combining in vivo genetic perturbation with CRISPR screening

7 August 2018