News

The first complete activity map of the brain has been unveiled by a large international collaboration of neuroscientists. The International Brain Laboratory (IBL) researchers published their findings today in two papers in Nature, revealing insights into how decision-making unfolds across the entire brain in mice at the resolution of single cells.

The Royal Society has awarded a Faraday Discovery Fellowship to Professor Tim Behrens, joint Group Leader at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at University College London (UCL) and Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Oxford.

We are delighted to announce that Dr Mehran Ahmadlou, a Senior Research Fellow at SWC, will join the University of Oxford’s Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics as a Group Leader this September. His new lab will study the neural mechanisms underlying adaptive behaviours, building on his research at SWC exploring how animals decide whether to pursue a current goal or switch to a new one.

Neuroscientists at SWC have discovered that the brain uses a dual system for learning through trial and error. This is the first time a second learning system has been identified, which could help explain how habits are formed and provide a scientific basis for new strategies to address conditions related to habitual learning, such as addictions and compulsions. Published today in Nature, the study in mice could also have implications for developing therapeutics for Parkinson’s.

Researchers reveal neural circuits in the brainstem that are crucially involved in implementing decisions by controlling three fundamental behavioural states or strategies: perseverance, exploration and disengagement. The study in mice may help to further understand neuropsychiatric conditions including obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), autism and major depressive disorder.

Neuroscientists have discovered how the brain distinguishes between visual motion occurring in the external world from that caused by the observer moving through it. Known as the “motion-source separation problem,” researchers have long wondered how the brain achieves this critical sensory distinction. This is the first time scientists have pinpointed the precise mechanisms.

Professor Andrew Saxe, a Joint SWC/GCNU Group Leader at UCL, has been announced as a 2025 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the United Kingdom Finalist in Life Sciences. This is the second time Professor Saxe has been named a Finalist after he was first recognised in the 2023 Blavatnik Awards.

Researchers at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at UCL have unveiled the precise brain mechanisms that enable animals to overcome instinctive fears. Published today in Science, the study in mice could have implications for developing therapeutics for fear-related disorders such as phobias, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.

eLife has announced SWC Group Leader Tim Behrens as its new Editor-in-Chief. He will be the public face and champion of the journal, promoting it within the research community and driving forward its new approach to peer-review and publishing excellence in science.

We are delighted to share that SWC Research Fellow Dr Oliver Gauld has received a Wellcome Early-Career Award, commencing January 2025. This prestigious award recognises Dr Gauld’s innovative research on economic decision-making and his meaningful contributions to understanding the neural mechanisms underlying these complex processes.

Neuroscientists have discovered brain cells that form multiple coordinate systems to tell us “where we are” in a sequence of behaviours. These cells can play out different sequences of actions, just like a music box can be configured to play different sequences of tones. The findings help us understand the algorithms used by the brain to flexibly generate complex behaviours, such as planning and reasoning, and might be useful in understanding how such processes go wrong in psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia.