Topic: Arc

NIH Research Project Grant (Parent R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

PA-25-301, posted December 18, 2024 and currently open. NIH's parent announcement for investigator-initiated R01 research project grants not proposing clinical trials; standard NIH submission policies and due dates apply, with the listing closing January 7, 2028.

21st International Meeting on Chemical Sensors

IMCS 2027 convenes the international chemical- and biosensing community at Concordia University to exchange research on chemical sensors, sensing materials, devices, analytical methods, and biological applications.

2027 Human Genetics and Genomics Conference

The 2027 Gordon Research Conference on Human Genetics and Genomics will convene researchers for intensive discussion of current developments across human genetics and genomic science. The meeting uses the GRC application model, with attendance applications accepted through May 30, 2027 unless the conference becomes oversubscribed earlier.

OHBM 2027 Annual Meeting

Annual meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, bringing together researchers to share groundbreaking research, engage in educational forums, and foster collaboration across neuroimaging methods and applications.

ISSCR 2027 Annual Meeting

Annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research at the Moscone West Convention Center, San Francisco, recognizing 25 years of discovery, collaboration, and progress in stem cell science.

2027 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)

The flagship conference of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, held May 24-28, 2027 at Coex in Seoul, South Korea, bringing together the world's top researchers and industry leaders to advance the field of robotics.

Comparative (neuro)science in insects

This EMBO Workshop integrates developmental biology, sensory neuroscience, central circuits, motor control, behavior, population genetics, genomics, and ecology to advance comparative insect neuroscience. Early-career researchers are prioritized for selected talks, and all accepted participants present their work.

Astrocytes: from molecules to systems

This EMBO Workshop brings together researchers studying astrocytes from molecular mechanisms to systems-level brain functions. The programme covers astrocyte roles in synapse assembly, circuit modulation, homeostasis, metabolism, memory, behavior, the blood-brain barrier, interactions with neurons and glia, and emerging therapeutic strategies.

APS Global Physics Summit 2027

The American Physical Society's Global Physics Summit, the world's largest annual physics research conference, joining the March Meeting and April Meeting; the 2027 edition is announced for April 11-16, 2027 in Atlanta, Georgia.

AACR Annual Meeting 2027

The American Association for Cancer Research's flagship annual meeting, themed 'Delivering Discovery Science: The Bridge to Breakthrough Therapeutics', at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida.

ACS Spring 2027

One of the American Chemical Society's twice-yearly ACS Meetings & Expositions, held March 21-25, 2027 in New Orleans, LA, featuring presentations across the chemistry divisions and an exposition.

Marine microbial chemical communication

This EMBO Workshop brings together researchers studying chemical crosstalk among marine microorganisms, spanning metabolite-mediated ecological interactions, analytical chemistry, microscale fluid dynamics, cell biology and omics-based microbial ecology.

Cosyne 2027

The annual Computational and Systems Neuroscience (Cosyne) meeting, an exchange forum for experimental and theoretical/computational approaches to problems in systems neuroscience. Cosyne returns to Montreal, Canada, from 11-16 March 2027.

2027 AAAS Annual Meeting

The multidisciplinary AAAS Annual Meeting convenes scientists, engineers, policymakers, educators, and journalists to examine how research, policy, media, and public trust shape scientific progress and evidence-informed action.

AAAI-27

The 41st Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence at the Palais des Congres de Montreal, featuring technical papers, special tracks, invited speakers, workshops, tutorials, poster sessions, and competitions to promote AI research and scientific exchange.

EMBO Postdoctoral Fellowships

Supports internationally mobile postdoctoral researchers in the life sciences for up to two years, including a salary or stipend, a relocation allowance and support for fellows with children. Applications accepted throughout the year; next hard cutoff 22 January 2027, 14:00 CET.

EMBO Postdoctoral Fellowships

EMBO Postdoctoral Fellowships support internationally mobile postdoctoral researchers in Europe and around the world for up to two years. The fellowship provides a salary or stipend, relocation support, assistance for fellows with children and access to leadership training and the EMBO fellows network.

SICB 2027

Annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, PA, spanning research across integrative and comparative biology.

Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing 2027

The 32nd Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing brings researchers together to present and discuss computational methods applied to biomedical problems, with emphasis on emerging, interdisciplinary areas of biocomputing.

Cell Bio 2026 - An ASCB|EMBO Meeting

Joint ASCB|EMBO meeting at the San Diego Convention Center bringing together the cell biology community to share scientific discoveries, network with colleagues across career stages, and explore new research areas and methodologies.

NeurIPS 2026

The Fortieth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems brings together interdisciplinary machine-learning research through peer-reviewed sessions, invited talks, demonstrations, tutorials, workshops, and an exposition.

How do Astrocytes Sculpt Synaptic Circuits?

Cagla Eroglu presents research on how astrocytes regulate synaptic connectivity during development, function and plasticity. The seminar examines molecular and cellular mechanisms that shape neural circuits using imaging, mouse models and complementary experimental approaches.

Wellcome Career Development Awards — November 2026 round

Funding for mid-career researchers from any discipline who have the potential to become international research leaders and whose work relates to human life, health and wellbeing.

National Science Foundation Translation to Practice (NSF TTP)

NSF support for translating research discoveries and innovations toward practical use through the TTP Translational and Partnership tracks.

2026 Dresselhaus Lecture

Gang Chen delivers MIT.nano's annual Dresselhaus Lecture, drawing on research that spans electron and phonon transport, thermoelectric energy conversion, microelectronic thermal management, desalination and data-center cooling.

UKRI Translation: MRC Impact Acceleration Awards

The Medical Research Council offers single-step support to develop a new or repurposed medicine, medical device, diagnostic, or other medical product. Projects should tackle a high-risk development step backed by prior funding and generate critical data that either de-risks onward progression or supports an evidence-based decision to stop.

Transformative sustainable AI technologies

UK Research and Innovation is funding speculative, high-risk projects that could deliver a step change in the sustainability of future AI systems. Proposals may address energy-efficient algorithms, resource-constrained AI, hardware-software co-design, repairable hardware, and other technology-led advances across the AI stack.

Wellcome Early-Career Awards – November 2026 round

Wellcome Early-Career Awards enable researchers to develop an independent research identity through innovative projects that advance understanding of life, health and wellbeing. The November 2026 round is open for applications through the Wellcome Funding platform.

Knight Initiative - Rosenkranz Aging Symposium

An in-person Stanford symposium highlighting recent progress in brain resilience and aging research, followed by a neuroscience poster session featuring work from the Stanford community.

NSF SBIR/STTR Pilot Emphasis on Scientific Instrumentation

NSF funding for startups and small businesses developing next-generation scientific instruments, experimental platforms and enabling technologies for research.

McKnight Scholar Awards

Supports exceptional young neuroscientists in the early stages of establishing an independent laboratory and research career. Up to ten scholars receive a total award of $225,000 paid in equal installments of $75,000 in 2027, 2028, and 2029; applications open early August 2026.

Emily Jacobs - New frontiers in women's brain health

Emily Jacobs will examine how endocrine transitions such as the circadian cycle, menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and menopause reshape the human brain. The talk combines precision brain imaging with a review of research, policy, and funding efforts intended to close persistent gaps in women's brain-health evidence.

The 2026 Picower Lecture with Richard L. Huganir

Richard L. Huganir discusses research on the molecular mechanisms that regulate glutamate receptors, the brain's major excitatory neurotransmitter receptors, and thereby modulate communication between neurons.

A Riemannian Geometry Perspective on Foundation Models

Oden Institute Seminar by Rex Ying (Yale University) on how non-Euclidean geometries, particularly hyperbolic geometry, can enhance foundation models by better capturing hierarchies and symmetries in real-world data, with applications across Transformers, language model training, multimodal systems, and recommender systems.

DNA replication and genome maintenance: from basic biology to human health

This EMBO-EMBL symposium connects fundamental mechanisms of DNA replication and genome maintenance with human health and disease. Researchers from molecular biology, genetics, chromatin, replication stress and genome stability meet in Heidelberg and online for talks, discussion and scientific exchange.

ASHG 2026 Annual Meeting

Annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics at the Palais des Congres de Montreal, gathering 7,500+ attendees from 75 countries for 100+ scientific sessions and 240 exhibitors and sponsors across human genetics and genomics research.

Next generation artificial intelligence: explainable AI

UKRI and EPSRC are funding speculative, high-risk fundamental research with the potential to produce a step change in the explainability of future AI systems. The call welcomes work on mechanistic interpretability, output reasoning, process examination, imposed explainability, uncertainty quantification, and novel approaches beyond those examples.

ERC Starting Grant

ERC-2027-STG call, opened 22 July 2026. Supports early-career researchers of any nationality to build their own teams and pursue frontier research in any field, with grants of up to EUR 1.5 million for 5 years (additional funding possible for relocation or major costs).

UKRI Translation: BBSRC Proof of Concept 2026

Funding to translate bioscience research into innovations such as products, services and solutions with real-world economic, societal and environmental impact. Opened 5 August 2026; £3,000,000 total, £100,000–£800,000 per project at 80% full economic cost.

EMBL Entrepreneurial Minds - Beyond the Structure: My Journey Through Science, Innovation and Life Choices

Ilaria Ferlenghi discusses a career spanning structural biology, cryo-electron microscopy, vaccine research and development, and the growing role of artificial intelligence and machine learning in scientific innovation and entrepreneurship.

The complex life of RNA

This EMBO and EMBL symposium convenes leaders, postdoctoral researchers, and students to discuss current RNA biology. The programme spans transcription, RNA processing and modification, messenger-RNA export and localisation, RNA surveillance and decay, translation, non-coding RNAs, gene-expression control, and coupling among these processes.

Engineering Research Initiation (ERI)

NSF support for new engineering investigators at eligible non-R1 institutions to initiate research programs, build capacity and advance their careers.

Building a Brain, One Cell at a Time: Reading the Developmental Instructions Behind Human Neural Diversity

Tom Nowakowski explains lineage barcoding and single-cell sequencing approaches for reconstructing neural stem-cell family trees and early wiring programs in developing mouse and human brains.

Molecular mechanisms in evolution and ecology

This EMBO workshop brings experimental and computational researchers together around molecular mechanisms of adaptation, evolutionary dynamics, microbial communities, symbiosis, biodiversity, and cell-environment interactions.

BRAIN Initiative: Theories, Models and Methods for Analysis of Complex Data from the Brain (R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

This NIH BRAIN Initiative funding opportunity supports new or substantially advanced theories, mechanistic or predictive models, and computational or statistical methods that improve quantitative understanding of brain function across scales. Tools must address complex neural and behavioral data and be made broadly available to the neuroscience research community.

BRAIN Initiative: Research Resource Grants for Technology Integration and Dissemination (U24 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

This NIH BRAIN Initiative opportunity supports dissemination of existing resources into neuroscience research practice. Activities may include distribution of tools and reagents, training in new technologies, access to technology platforms or specialized facilities, minor improvements to resource delivery, and adaptations for user communities.

Targeted Grants to Institutes

Supports established institutes and research centers in mathematics and the physical sciences to strengthen contacts within the international scientific community; up to $750,000 (inclusive of 20% indirect costs) over a three-year award period, with up to ten grants each year.

Simons Symposia 2026 call for proposals

The Simons Foundation invites proposals to organize new symposium series in mathematics and theoretical physics, including theoretical computer science. Selected series may comprise up to three weeklong meetings with travel, lodging, and meals covered for participants, creating sustained time for collaboration on timely research problems.

Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology (PRFB)

NSF postdoctoral fellowships supporting early-career scientists who combine artificial intelligence with biological research and training to advance biotechnology innovation.

6th Annual Precision Mental Health Symposium: From Circuits to Mindsets: Precision Mental Health in the Real World

Stanford's annual Precision Mental Health Symposium explores how neuroscience, psychiatry, data science, and artificial intelligence can translate brain research into real-world mental-health care. Themes include circuits and cognition, biomarkers and neuroimaging, rapid-acting interventions, neuromodulation, and precision therapeutics.

Pre-doctoral Research Bursary

Cancer Research UK offers short-term support for clinicians, nurses and allied health professionals to gain early-career cancer-research experience and generate preliminary data before applying for a PhD or MD fellowship.

The Surprising Molecular Changes in Eggs, Sperm, and Females that Mediate Fertility

Mariana Wolfner presents research on the molecular changes in eggs, sperm, and females that coordinate successful reproduction, drawing on genetic and physiological studies of fertilization. This NIH Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series event is offered in person and through NIH VideoCast.

AI for the Sciences: towards understanding

ISTA Lecture by Klaus Robert Müller (TU Berlin & Korea University, Seoul) on how machine learning and AI enable scientific research, particularly in medicine and chemistry, and on explainability techniques for extracting understanding from machine learning models.

Lessons from the Dead

Z Yan Wang presents comparative neuroscience research on the brains and behaviors of octopuses and bumblebees to illuminate life-history processes. The talk is part of Columbia's Tuesdays@10 neuroscience seminar program for researchers across fields and career stages.

Wellcome Discovery Awards

Funding for established researchers and teams from any discipline to pursue bold, creative research that can deliver significant shifts in understanding related to human life, health and wellbeing.

HFSP Accelerator Grant 2027

The HFSP Accelerator Grant helps eligible HFSP Research Grant teams add an independent group leader from an underrepresented eligible country, bringing complementary expertise and strengthening international life-science collaboration.

Early Sleep Biomarkers of Alzheimer's Disease Pathophysiology and Memory Impairment

Bryce Mander presents research on early sleep biomarkers associated with Alzheimer's disease pathophysiology and memory impairment. The William C. Dement Seminar connects sleep and circadian neuroscience with neurodegeneration, cognition and clinically relevant approaches to detecting disease-related change.

Deciphering the Dynamics of the Unconscious Brain under General Anesthesia

Stanford Neurosciences Seminar Series talk by Emery Brown (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Neuroscience Statistics Research Lab) on deciphering the dynamics of the unconscious brain under general anesthesia, hosted by the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute.

ERC Proof of Concept Grant

ERC-2026-PoC call funding ERC grantees to explore the innovation potential of their frontier research; a lump sum of EUR 150,000 for a period of 18 months, with one application per Principal Investigator per call.

SQI Seminar Series: Tal Linzen, NYU

Tal Linzen, an associate professor of linguistics and data science at New York University and a research scientist at Google, will speak in MIT's Siegel Family Quest for Intelligence seminar series. His work combines behavioral experiments and computational methods to study language learning and comprehension, alongside large-language-model post-training, evaluation, and interpretability.

Reconstructing the human past: using ancient and modern genomics

This EMBO-EMBL symposium joins population genetics, bioinformatics, microbiology, anthropology, archaeology, and history to study human variation, ancient pathogens, domestication, analytical methods, and ethics in paleogenomics.

Recent advances in organoid production and drug discovery

This English-language webinar examines advances in organoid research, production, and drug discovery. Hideya Sakaguchi covers the developmental-biology origins of neural organoid research and its potential for drug discovery, followed by a keynote from Thomas Mitchell of The Organoid Company and a live question session.

Cascadia Mucosal Biology Symposium

The inaugural Cascadia Mucosal Biology Symposium brings together mucosal biologists and immunologists to discuss mechanistic and translational research on health and disease at mucosal surfaces. Topics include tissue-immune crosstalk, microbial homeostasis, antigen-specific barrier responses, barrier development and repair, and translation to medicine.

Junior Fellows of the Simons Society of Fellows

The Simons Foundation invites nominations for outstanding early-career scientists to receive up to three years of support for independent research at an educational institution in New York City. Junior Fellows join an interdisciplinary scientific community and participate in weekly lectures and dinners, an annual conference, and a retreat while developing their research programmes.

NIH Director’s Early Independence Award (DP5 Clinical Trial Optional)

The NIH Common Fund enables exceptional junior scientists to bypass a traditional postdoctoral period and launch an independent research career at a supportive institution.

Ensuring the Vitality of the Biomedical Research Workforce

Elena Fuentes-Afflick examines the state of the biomedical research workforce and the conditions needed to sustain a healthy, productive research enterprise. This NIH Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series event is offered in person and through NIH VideoCast.

NIH Director's Pioneer Award (DP1 Clinical Trial Optional)

RFA-RM-27-001, posted June 29, 2026 and currently open. The Pioneer Award supports individual scientists proposing pioneering, high-impact approaches to major challenges in biomedical or behavioral research; 8 awards expected from $8,000,000 in program funding.

MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2026

HORIZON-MSCA-2026-PF-01 call, open since 9 April 2026 with a budget of EUR 399.05 million expected to fund nearly 1,600 projects. European and Global Postdoctoral Fellowships help researchers acquire new skills through international, interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral mobility.

Learning and memory in the infant brain

Nick Turk-Browne presents research using infant functional MRI to investigate how the hippocampus supports learning and memory early in life. The seminar connects neural development, memory formation and infantile amnesia through new methods for studying awake infants.

Preparing for non-academic interviews

Industry recruiters and hiring managers share practical advice on preparing for non-academic interviews, followed by a live question-and-answer session for researchers exploring careers beyond academia.

ECCV 2026

The 19th European Conference on Computer Vision, the biennial premier research conference in computer vision and machine learning managed by the European Computer Vision Association, held at Malmo Arena and Malmomassan in Malmo, Sweden.

Chemical biology 2026

This EMBO workshop covers emerging chemical-biology research spanning computational protein design, big data and AI, technologies for probing and manipulating biology, chemical synthetic biology, and RNA.

NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award (R01 Clinical Trial Optional)

The NIH Common Fund supports individuals or teams pursuing exceptionally innovative, unconventional research with the potential to create or overturn major paradigms across biomedical and behavioral science.

Project Grants in the Natural and Technical Sciences 2026

Supports fundamental research within the natural and technical sciences with potential future applications in life science, health science or sustainability; up to DKK 4 million per project from a DKK 77 million grant capital in 2026. Call opened 19 June 2026.

ERC Plus Grant 2026

The ERC Plus Grant supports a single principal investigator pursuing an ambitious, transformative frontier-research project beyond the scope of existing ERC grants, with four to seven years of lump-sum funding.

Project Grants in Bioscience and Basic Biomedicine

Novo Nordisk Foundation open-competition project grants of DKK 1–4.5 million over 1–3 years for fundamental research anchored at a Danish university, hospital or non-profit research institution; call opened 18 June 2026, with an additional DKK 12 million reserved for a strategic theme on microbiota-host interactions.

Somatic cell deformability drives reproductive evolution

Suhrid Ghosh will present work on how cell mechanics and cytoskeletal dynamics shape the evolution of reproductive structures in Drosophila ovaries. Cross-species morphology, ex-vivo live imaging, perturbations of cortical tension, and newly isolated terminal-filament cells reveal how somatic-cell deformability can alter ovariole architecture and reproductive fitness.

ERC Advanced Grant

ERC-2026-ADG call, opened 28 May 2026. For established researchers with a track-record of significant research achievements, in any scientific field, hosted in an EU Member State or associated country; up to EUR 2.5 million for 5 years, with additional funding possible.

Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance Research Symposium

Stanford's summer research symposium features a keynote by Jamie Zeitzer, undergraduate lightning talks, and a poster and demonstration session on human performance research.

Advancing CAR T Cell Therapy for Brain Tumors: Overcoming Barriers to Efficacy

Gladstone-UCSF Institute of Genomic Immunology Seminar by Christine Brown, PhD (Deputy Director, T Cell Therapeutics Research Laboratories) on developing and refining redirected CAR T cells for malignant brain tumors, including glioblastoma, tumor heterogeneity, immunosuppressive microenvironments, delivery routes, and manufacturing.

The exoplanet revolution and life in the Universe - Public Lecture & Panel Discussion

Public lecture by Prof. Didier Queloz, FRS (Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy, Cambridge; Professor of Physics, ETH Zurich), organized by the Swiss Physical Society at EPFL, on how exoplanet discoveries transformed understanding of planet formation and the search for life signatures in planetary atmospheres. Free admission for the general public.

How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husain

Masud Husain explains the neuroscience of motivation, dopamine, effort, and reward, together with research on apathy, dementia, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, and cognitive resilience.

Researchers test magic mushrooms as an anorexia treatment

Scientific American's Science Quickly examines an early pilot trial of psilocybin-assisted therapy for people with long-term anorexia. The episode carefully discusses reported changes in symptoms and motivation, possible neuroplasticity mechanisms, the small uncontrolled sample and the need for larger randomized studies and clinical safeguards.

Briefing Chat: New narcolepsy drug could unlock host of novel brain therapies

Nature staff discuss how a newly approved orexin-targeting narcolepsy drug could enable therapies for other neurological conditions, and examine human brain organoids that have remained viable for more than five years. The episode connects sleep medicine, therapeutic neuroscience, and long-term models of human brain development.

BI 244 Marco Facchin: Philosophy and Science of Biological Brains

Marco Facchin joins Brain Inspired to discuss computationalism and alternatives in the philosophy and science of biological brains. The conversation covers embodied and 4E cognition, predictive processing, artificial intelligence, metabolic constraints, biological detail, and how theories of mind relate to consciousness and neuroscience.

NIH Director’s New Innovator Award Program (DP2 Clinical Trial Optional)

The NIH Common Fund supports exceptionally creative early-stage investigators pursuing bold, high-impact biomedical or behavioral research without requiring preliminary data.

Emerging NeuroTech: Ultrasound in Neuroscience

Two talks present emerging applications of ultrasound technology in neuroscience, spanning brain imaging and human-machine interaction. The in-person seminar is open to MIT researchers, students, and staff and is supported by the MIT School of Science and the Feng Lab at the McGovern Institute.

Emerging NeuroTech: Ultrasound in Neuroscience

MIT researchers and students are invited to two talks on emerging applications of ultrasound for non-invasive brain imaging, neural modulation and wearable human-machine interaction.

Career Awards at the Scientific Interface

CASI provides $560,000 over five years to bridge advanced postdoctoral training and the first years of faculty service for researchers from mathematics, physics, chemistry, computer science, statistics or engineering applying their expertise to biological questions. Pre-proposals due August 14, 2026, 3 pm EDT.

Briefing Chat: Anthropic rolls out new AI watermark — will it make a difference?

Nature staff examine what an invisible watermark for AI-generated text could mean for research integrity and the detection of synthetic content, then discuss cross-cultural research showing that ticklishness is a distinct and specialized body sensation with common anatomical patterns.

Defining profilin function in mammalian actin dynamics and cell behaviour

Klemens Rottner (Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, Braunschweig) presents evidence that profilin acts as a master regulator of actin filament dynamics essential for cell migration and growth, controlling both formin- and Arp2/3 complex-dependent actin assembly pathways.

The probiotic bacteria engineered to treat diabetes

Nature's podcast explores genetically engineered probiotic bacteria that sense elevated glucose and release therapeutic factors, lowering blood sugar in animal studies. The episode also covers ecological research on pumas, geological erosion, and how a solar eclipse can help researchers probe the Sun's magnetic corona.

Briefing Chat: Orcas smashed a sunfish to bits — researchers aren’t sure why

Nature staff discuss a large survey of insect diversity in the Amazon and unusual orca behavior captured on video involving a sunfish.

‘Holy grail’ of naked mole-rat research reveals how queens rule

Nature reporters discuss the chemical signal used by naked mole-rat queens to maintain reproductive hierarchy and how people reason when learning unfamiliar games.

Nukes in space? Orbital detector could sniff out warheads

A Nature Podcast episode examines a compact orbital detector designed to identify hidden nuclear devices and research on threats to Indigenous plant knowledge.

FENS Forum 2026

Europe’s leading neuroscience conference, bringing together researchers, clinicians, and innovators across molecular, cellular, systems, cognitive, and clinical neuroscience.

Predictive Coding Light

Current machine learning systems consume vastly more energy than biological brains. Neuromorphic systems aim to overcome this difference by mimicking the brain’s information coding via discrete voltage spikes. However, it remains unclear how both artificial and natural networks of spiking neurons can learn energy-efficient information processing strategies. Here we propose Predictive Coding Light (PCL), a recurrent hierarchical spiking neural network for unsupervised representation learning. In contrast to previous predictive coding approaches, PCL does not transmit prediction errors to higher processing stages. Instead, it suppresses the most predictable spikes and transmits a compressed representation of the input. Using only biologically plausible spike-timing based learning rules, PCL reproduces a wealth of findings on information processing in visual cortex and permits strong performance in downstream classification tasks. Overall, PCL offers a new approach to predictive coding and its implementation in natural and artificial spiking neural networks

Consciousness at the edge of chaos

Over the last 20 years, neuroimaging and electrophysiology techniques have become central to understanding the mechanisms that accompany loss and recovery of consciousness. Much of this research is performed in the context of healthy individuals with neurotypical brain dynamics. Yet, a true understanding of how consciousness emerges from the joint action of neurons has to account for how severely pathological brains, often showing phenotypes typical of unconsciousness, can nonetheless generate a subjective viewpoint. In this presentation, I will start from the context of Disorders of Consciousness and will discuss recent work aimed at finding generalizable signatures of consciousness that are reliable across a spectrum of brain electrophysiological phenotypes focusing in particular on the notion of edge-of-chaos criticality.

Computational Mechanisms of Predictive Processing in Brains and Machines

Predictive processing offers a unifying view of neural computation, proposing that brains continuously anticipate sensory input and update internal models based on prediction errors. In this talk, I will present converging evidence for the computational mechanisms underlying this framework across human neuroscience and deep neural networks. I will begin with recent work showing that large-scale distributed prediction-error encoding in the human brain directly predicts how sensory representations reorganize through predictive learning. I will then turn to PredNet, a popular predictive coding inspired deep network that has been widely used to model real-world biological vision systems. Using dynamic stimuli generated with our Spatiotemporal Style Transfer algorithm, we demonstrate that PredNet relies primarily on low-level spatiotemporal structure and remains insensitive to high-level content, revealing limits in its generalization capacity. Finally, I will discuss new recurrent vision models that integrate top-down feedback connections with intrinsic neural variability, uncovering a dual mechanism for robust sensory coding in which neural variability decorrelates unit responses, while top-down feedback stabilizes network dynamics. Together, these results outline how prediction error signaling and top-down feedback pathways shape adaptive sensory processing in biological and artificial systems.

Computational bio-imaging via inverse scattering

Optical imaging is a major research tool in the basic sciences, and is the only imaging modality that routinely enables non-ionized imaging with subcellular spatial resolutions and high imaging speeds. In biological imaging applications, however, optical imaging is limited by tissue scattering to short imaging depths. This prevents large-scale bio-imaging by allowing visualization of only the outer superficial layers of an organism, or specific components isolated from within the organism and prepared in-vitro.

Harnessing Artificial Intelligence to Fight Infectious Diseases

Charlene Lancaster speaks with Cesar de la Fuente about using artificial intelligence to discover novel antibiotics from organisms and genetic sources spanning spiders, archaea, woolly mammoths, and humans.

Introduction to protocols.io: Scientific collaboration through open protocols

Research articles and laboratory protocol organization often lack detailed instructions for replicating experiments. protocols.io is an open-access platform where researchers collaboratively create dynamic, interactive, step-by-step protocols that can be executed on mobile devices or the web. Researchers can easily and efficiently share protocols with colleagues, collaborators, the scientific community, or make them public. Real-time communication and interaction keep protocols up to date. Public protocols receive a DOI and enable open communication with authors and researchers to foster efficient experimentation and reproducibility.

Biomolecular condensates as drivers of neuroinflammation

Temporal Hierarchies in Reward and Behavioral Control

NF1 exon 51 alternative splicing: functional implications in Central Nervous System (CNS) Cells

Astrocytes: From Metabolism to Cognition

Different brain cell types exhibit distinct metabolic signatures that link energy economy to cellular function. Astrocytes and neurons, for instance, diverge dramatically in their reliance on glycolysis versus oxidative phosphorylation, underscoring that metabolic fuel efficiency is not uniform across cell types. A key factor shaping this divergence is the structural organization of the mitochondrial respiratory chain into supercomplexes. Specifically, complexes I (CI) and III (CIII) form a CI–CIII supercomplex, but the degree of this assembly varies by cell type. In neurons, CI is predominantly integrated into supercomplexes, resulting in highly efficient mitochondrial respiration and minimal reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation. Conversely, in astrocytes, a larger fraction of CI remains unassembled, freely existing apart from CIII, leading to reduced respiratory efficiency and elevated mitochondrial ROS production. Despite this apparent inefficiency, astrocytes boast a highly adaptable metabolism capable of responding to diverse stressors. Their looser CI–CIII organization allows for flexible ROS signaling, which activates antioxidant programs via transcription factors like Nrf2. This modular architecture enables astrocytes not only to balance energy production but also to support neuronal health and influence complex organismal behaviors.

Introduction to protocols.io: Scientific collaboration through open protocols

Research articles and laboratory protocol organization often lack detailed instructions for replicating experiments. protocols.io is an open-access platform where researchers collaboratively create dynamic, interactive, step-by-step protocols that can be executed on mobile devices or the web. Researchers can easily and efficiently share protocols with colleagues, collaborators, the scientific community, or make them public. Real-time communication and interaction keep protocols up to date. Public protocols receive a DOI and enable open communication with authors and researchers to foster efficient experimentation and reproducibility.

How the presynapse forms and functions”

Nervous system function relies on the polarized architecture of neurons, established by directional transport of pre- and postsynaptic cargoes. While delivery of postsynaptic components depends on the secretory pathway, the identity of the membrane compartment(s) that supply presynaptic active zone (AZ) and synaptic vesicle (SV) proteins is largely unknown. I will discuss our recent advances in our understanding of how key components of the presynaptic machinery for neurotransmitter release are transported and assembled focussing on our studies in genome-engineered human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived neurons. Specifically, I will focus on the composition and cell biological identity of the axonal transport vesicles that shuttle key components of neurotransmission to nascent synapses and on machinery for axonal transport and its control by signaling lipids. Our studies identify a crucial mechanism mediating the delivery of SV and active zone proteins to developing synapses and reveal connections to neurological disorders. In the second part of my talk, I will discuss how exocytosis and endocytosis are coupled to maintain presynaptic membrane homeostasis. I will present unpublished data regarding the role of membrane tension in the coupling of exocytosis and endocytosis at synapses. We have identified an endocytic BAR domain protein that is capable of sensing alterations in membrane tension caused by the exocytotic fusion of SVs to initiate compensatory endocytosis to restore plasma membrane area. Interference with this mechanism results in defects in the coupling of presynaptic exocytosis and SV recycling at human synapses.

The SIMple microscope: Development of a fibre-based platform for accessible SIM imaging in unconventional environments

Advancements in imaging speed, depth and resolution have made structured illumination microscopy (SIM) an increasingly powerful optical sectioning (OS) and super-resolution (SR) technique, but these developments remain inaccessible to many life science researchers due to the cost, optical complexity and delicacy of these instruments. We address these limitations by redesigning the optical path using in-line fibre components that are compact, lightweight and easily assembled in a “Plug & Play” modality, without compromising imaging performance. They can be integrated into an existing widefield microscope with a minimum of optical components and alignment, making OS-SIM more accessible to researchers with less optics experience. We also demonstrate a complete SR-SIM imaging system with dimensions 300 mm × 300 mm × 450 mm. We propose to enable accessible SIM imaging by utilising its compact, lightweight and robust design to transport it where it is needed, and image in “unconventional” environments where factors such as temperature and biosafety considerations currently limit imaging experiments.

OpenNeuro FitLins GLM: An Accessible, Semi-Automated Pipeline for OpenNeuro Task fMRI Analysis

In this talk, I will discuss the OpenNeuro Fitlins GLM package and provide an illustration of the analytic workflow. OpenNeuro FitLins GLM is a semi-automated pipeline that reduces barriers to analyzing task-based fMRI data from OpenNeuro's 600+ task datasets. Created for psychology, psychiatry and cognitive neuroscience researchers without extensive computational expertise, this tool automates what is largely a manual process and compilation of in-house scripts for data retrieval, validation, quality control, statistical modeling and reporting that, in some cases, may require weeks of effort. The workflow abides by open-science practices, enhancing reproducibility and incorporates community feedback for model improvement. The pipeline integrates BIDS-compliant datasets and fMRIPrep preprocessed derivatives, and dynamically creates BIDS Statistical Model specifications (with Fitlins) to perform common mass univariate [GLM] analyses. To enhance and standardize reporting, it generates comprehensive reports which includes design matrices, statistical maps and COBIDAS-aligned reporting that is fully reproducible from the model specifications and derivatives. OpenNeuro Fitlins GLM has been tested on over 30 datasets spanning 50+ unique fMRI tasks (e.g., working memory, social processing, emotion regulation, decision-making, motor paradigms), reducing analysis times from weeks to hours when using high-performance computers, thereby enabling researchers to conduct robust single-study, meta- and mega-analyses of task fMRI data with significantly improved accessibility, standardized reporting and reproducibility.

A personal journey on understanding intelligence

The focus of this talk is not about my research in AI or Robotics but my own journey on trying to do research and understand intelligence in a rapidly evolving research landscape. I will trace my path from conducting early-stage research during graduate school, to working on practical solutions within a startup environment, and finally to my current role where I participate in more structured research at a major tech company. Through these varied experiences, I will provide different perspectives on research and talk about how my core beliefs on intelligence have changed and sometimes even been compromised. There are no lessons to be learned from my stories, but hopefully they will be entertaining.

Understanding reward-guided learning using large-scale datasets

Understanding the neural mechanisms of reward-guided learning is a long-standing goal of computational neuroscience. Recent methodological innovations enable us to collect ever larger neural and behavioral datasets. This presents opportunities to achieve greater understanding of learning in the brain at scale, as well as methodological challenges. In the first part of the talk, I will discuss our recent insights into the mechanisms by which zebra finch songbirds learn to sing. Dopamine has been long thought to guide reward-based trial-and-error learning by encoding reward prediction errors. However, it is unknown whether the learning of natural behaviours, such as developmental vocal learning, occurs through dopamine-based reinforcement. Longitudinal recordings of dopamine and bird songs reveal that dopamine activity is indeed consistent with encoding a reward prediction error during naturalistic learning. In the second part of the talk, I will talk about recent work we are doing at DeepMind to develop tools for automatically discovering interpretable models of behavior directly from animal choice data. Our method, dubbed CogFunSearch, uses LLMs within an evolutionary search process in order to "discover" novel models in the form of Python programs that excel at accurately predicting animal behavior during reward-guided learning. The discovered programs reveal novel patterns of learning and choice behavior that update our understanding of how the brain solves reinforcement learning problems.

FLUXSynID: High-Resolution Synthetic Face Generation for Document and Live Capture Images

Synthetic face datasets are increasingly used to overcome the limitations of real-world biometric data, including privacy concerns, demographic imbalance, and high collection costs. However, many existing methods lack fine-grained control over identity attributes and fail to produce paired, identity-consistent images under structured capture conditions. In this talk, I will present FLUXSynID, a framework for generating high-resolution synthetic face datasets with user-defined identity attribute distributions and paired document-style and trusted live capture images. The dataset generated using FLUXSynID shows improved alignment with real-world identity distributions and greater diversity compared to prior work. I will also discuss how FLUXSynID’s dataset and generation tools can support research in face recognition and morphing attack detection (MAD), enhancing model robustness in both academic and practical applications.

“Brain theory, what is it or what should it be?”

n the neurosciences the need for some 'overarching' theory is sometimes expressed, but it is not always obvious what is meant by this. One can perhaps agree that in modern science observation and experimentation is normally complemented by 'theory', i.e. the development of theoretical concepts that help guiding and evaluating experiments and measurements. A deeper discussion of 'brain theory' will require the clarification of some further distictions, in particular: theory vs. model and brain research (and its theory) vs. neuroscience. Other questions are: Does a theory require mathematics? Or even differential equations? Today it is often taken for granted that the whole universe including everything in it, for example humans, animals, and plants, can be adequately treated by physics and therefore theoretical physics is the overarching theory. Even if this is the case, it has turned out that in some particular parts of physics (the historical example is thermodynamics) it may be useful to simplify the theory by introducing additional theoretical concepts that can in principle be 'reduced' to more complex descriptions on the 'microscopic' level of basic physical particals and forces. In this sense, brain theory may be regarded as part of theoretical neuroscience, which is inside biophysics and therefore inside physics, or theoretical physics. Still, in neuroscience and brain research, additional concepts are typically used to describe results and help guiding experimentation that are 'outside' physics, beginning with neurons and synapses, names of brain parts and areas, up to concepts like 'learning', 'motivation', 'attention'. Certainly, we do not yet have one theory that includes all these concepts. So 'brain theory' is still in a 'pre-newtonian' state. However, it may still be useful to understand in general the relations between a larger theory and its 'parts', or between microscopic and macroscopic theories, or between theories at different 'levels' of description. This is what I plan to do.

Functional Imaging of the Human Brain: A Window into the Organization of the Human Mind

Gene regulation networks in nervous system cancers: identification of novel drug targets

Neural circuits underlying sleep structure and functions

Sleep is an active state critical for processing emotional memories encoded during waking in both humans and animals. There is a remarkable overlap between the brain structures and circuits active during sleep, particularly rapid eye-movement (REM) sleep, and the those encoding emotions. Accordingly, disruptions in sleep quality or quantity, including REM sleep, are often associated with, and precede the onset of, nearly all affective psychiatric and mood disorders. In this context, a major biomedical challenge is to better understand the underlying mechanisms of the relationship between (REM) sleep and emotion encoding to improve treatments for mental health. This lecture will summarize our investigation of the cellular and circuit mechanisms underlying sleep architecture, sleep oscillations, and local brain dynamics across sleep-wake states using electrophysiological recordings combined with single-cell calcium imaging or optogenetics. The presentation will detail the discovery of a 'somato-dendritic decoupling'in prefrontal cortex pyramidal neurons underlying REM sleep-dependent stabilization of optimal emotional memory traces. This decoupling reflects a tonic inhibition at the somas of pyramidal cells, occurring simultaneously with a selective disinhibition of their dendritic arbors selectively during REM sleep. Recent findings on REM sleep-dependent subcortical inputs and neuromodulation of this decoupling will be discussed in the context of synaptic plasticity and the optimization of emotional responses in the maintenance of mental health.

From Spiking Predictive Coding to Learning Abstract Object Representation

In a first part of the talk, I will present Predictive Coding Light (PCL), a novel unsupervised learning architecture for spiking neural networks. In contrast to conventional predictive coding approaches, which only transmit prediction errors to higher processing stages, PCL learns inhibitory lateral and top-down connectivity to suppress the most predictable spikes and passes a compressed representation of the input to higher processing stages. We show that PCL reproduces a range of biological findings and exhibits a favorable tradeoff between energy consumption and downstream classification performance on challenging benchmarks. A second part of the talk will feature our lab’s efforts to explain how infants and toddlers might learn abstract object representations without supervision. I will present deep learning models that exploit the temporal and multimodal structure of their sensory inputs to learn representations of individual objects, object categories, or abstract super-categories such as „kitchen object“ in a fully unsupervised fashion. These models offer a parsimonious account of how abstract semantic knowledge may be rooted in children's embodied first-person experiences.

An Ecological and Objective Neural Marker of Implicit Unfamiliar Identity Recognition

We developed a novel paradigm measuring implicit identity recognition using Fast Periodic Visual Stimulation (FPVS) with EEG among 16 students and 12 police officers with normal face processing abilities. Participants' neural responses to a 1-Hz tagged oddball identity embedded within a 6-Hz image stream revealed implicit recognition with high-quality mugshots but not CCTV-like images, suggesting optimal resolution requirements. Our findings extend previous research by demonstrating that even unfamiliar identities can elicit robust neural recognition signatures through brief, repeated passive exposure. This approach offers potential for objective validation of face processing abilities in forensic applications, including assessment of facial examiners, Super-Recognisers, and eyewitnesses, potentially overcoming limitations of traditional behavioral assessment methods.

Open Hardware Microfluidics

What’s the point of having scientific and technological innovations when only a few can benefit from them? How can we make science more inclusive? Those questions are always in the back of my mind when we perform research in our laboratory, and we have a strong focus on the scientific accessibility of our developed methods from microfabrication to sensor development.

Astrocytes release glutamate by regulated exocytosis in health and disease

Astrocytes release glutamate by regulated exocytosis in health and disease Vladimir Parpura, International Translational Neuroscience Research Institute, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou, P.R. China Parpura will present you with the evidence that astrocytes, a subtype of glial cells in the brain, can exocytotically release the neurotransmitter glutamate and how this release is regulated. Spatiotemporal characteristic of vesicular fusion that underlie glutamate release in astrocytes will be discussed. He will also present data on a translational project in which this release pathway can be targeted for the treatment of glioblastoma, the deadliest brain cancer.

“A Focus on 3D Printed Lenses: Rapid prototyping, low-cost microscopy and enhanced imaging for the life sciences”

High-quality glass lenses are commonplace in the design of optical instrumentation used across the biosciences. However, research-grade glass lenses are often costly, delicate and, depending on the prescription, can involve intricate and lengthy manufacturing - even more so in bioimaging applications. This seminar will outline 3D printing as a viable low-cost alternative for the manufacture of high-performance optical elements, where I will also discuss the creation of the world’s first fully 3D printed microscope and other implementations of 3D printed lenses. Our 3D printed lenses were generated using consumer-grade 3D printers and pose a 225x materials cost-saving compared to glass optics. Moreover, they can be produced in any lab or home environment and offer great potential for education and outreach. Following performance validation, our 3D printed optics were implemented in the production of a fully 3D printed microscope and demonstrated in histological imaging applications. We also applied low-cost fabrication methods to exotic lens geometries to enhance resolution and contrast across spatial scales and reveal new biological structures. Across these applications, our findings showed that 3D printed lenses are a viable substitute for commercial glass lenses, with the advantage of being relatively low-cost, accessible, and suitable for use in optical instruments. Combining 3D printed lenses with open-source 3D printed microscope chassis designs opens the doors for low-cost applications for rapid prototyping, low-resource field diagnostics, and the creation of cheap educational tools.

Memory Decoding Journal Club: "Synaptic architecture of a memory engram in the mouse hippocampus

Synaptic architecture of a memory engram in the mouse hippocampus

Understanding reward-guided learning using large-scale datasets

Understanding the neural mechanisms of reward-guided learning is a long-standing goal of computational neuroscience. Recent methodological innovations enable us to collect ever larger neural and behavioral datasets. This presents opportunities to achieve greater understanding of learning in the brain at scale, as well as methodological challenges. In the first part of the talk, I will discuss our recent insights into the mechanisms by which zebra finch songbirds learn to sing. Dopamine has been long thought to guide reward-based trial-and-error learning by encoding reward prediction errors. However, it is unknown whether the learning of natural behaviours, such as developmental vocal learning, occurs through dopamine-based reinforcement. Longitudinal recordings of dopamine and bird songs reveal that dopamine activity is indeed consistent with encoding a reward prediction error during naturalistic learning. In the second part of the talk, I will talk about recent work we are doing at DeepMind to develop tools for automatically discovering interpretable models of behavior directly from animal choice data. Our method, dubbed CogFunSearch, uses LLMs within an evolutionary search process in order to "discover" novel models in the form of Python programs that excel at accurately predicting animal behavior during reward-guided learning. The discovered programs reveal novel patterns of learning and choice behavior that update our understanding of how the brain solves reinforcement learning problems.

SSFN Webinar - Pain research

Harnessing Big Data in Neuroscience: From Mapping Brain Connectivity to Predicting Traumatic Brain Injury

Neuroscience is experiencing unprecedented growth in dataset size both within individual brains and across populations. Large-scale, multimodal datasets are transforming our understanding of brain structure and function, creating opportunities to address previously unexplored questions. However, managing this increasing data volume requires new training and technology approaches. Modern data technologies are reshaping neuroscience by enabling researchers to tackle complex questions within a Ph.D. or postdoctoral timeframe. I will discuss cloud-based platforms such as brainlife.io, that provide scalable, reproducible, and accessible computational infrastructure. Modern data technology can democratize neuroscience, accelerate discovery and foster scientific transparency and collaboration. Concrete examples will illustrate how these technologies can be applied to mapping brain connectivity, studying human learning and development, and developing predictive models for traumatic brain injury (TBI). By integrating cloud computing and scalable data-sharing frameworks, neuroscience can become more impactful, inclusive, and data-driven..

Recent views on pre-registration

A discussion on some recent perspectives on pre-registration, which has become a growing trend in the past few years. This is not just limited to neuroimaging, and it applies to most scientific fields. We will start with this overview editorial by Simmons et al. (2021): https://faculty.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/34-Simmons-Nelson-Simonsohn-2021a.pdf, and also talk about a more critical perspective by Pham & Oh (2021): https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michel-Pham/publication/349545600_Preregistration_Is_Neither_Sufficient_nor_Necessary_for_Good_Science/links/60fb311e2bf3553b29096aa7/Preregistration-Is-Neither-Sufficient-nor-Necessary-for-Good-Science.pdf. I would like us to discuss the pros and cons of pre-registration, and if we have time, I may do a demonstration of how to perform a pre-registration through the Open Science Framework.

Reading Scenes

Fear learning induces synaptic potentiation between engram neurons in the rat lateral amygdala

Fear learning induces synaptic potentiation between engram neurons in the rat lateral amygdala. This study by Marios Abatis et al. demonstrates how fear conditioning strengthens synaptic connections between engram cells in the lateral amygdala, revealed through optogenetic identification of neuronal ensembles and electrophysiological measurements. The work provides crucial insights into memory formation mechanisms at the synaptic level, with implications for understanding anxiety disorders and developing targeted interventions. Presented by Dr. Kenneth Hayworth, this journal club will explore the paper's methodology linking engram cell reactivation with synaptic plasticity measurements, and discuss implications for memory decoding research.

Deepfake emotional expressions trigger the uncanny valley brain response, even when they are not recognised as fake

Facial expressions are inherently dynamic, and our visual system is sensitive to subtle changes in their temporal sequence. However, researchers often use dynamic morphs of photographs—simplified, linear representations of motion—to study the neural correlates of dynamic face perception. To explore the brain's sensitivity to natural facial motion, we constructed a novel dynamic face database using generative neural networks, trained on a verified set of video-recorded emotional expressions. The resulting deepfakes, consciously indistinguishable from videos, enabled us to separate biological motion from photorealistic form. Results showed that conventional dynamic morphs elicit distinct responses in the brain compared to videos and photos, suggesting they violate expectations (n400) and have reduced social salience (late positive potential). This suggests that dynamic morphs misrepresent facial dynamism, resulting in misleading insights about the neural and behavioural correlates of face perception. Deepfakes and videos elicited largely similar neural responses, suggesting they could be used as a proxy for real faces in vision research, where video recordings cannot be experimentally manipulated. And yet, despite being consciously undetectable as fake, deepfakes elicited an expectation violation response in the brain. This points to a neural sensitivity to naturalistic facial motion, beyond conscious awareness. Despite some differences in neural responses, the realism and manipulability of deepfakes make them a valuable asset for research where videos are unfeasible. Using these stimuli, we proposed a novel marker for the conscious perception of naturalistic facial motion – Frontal delta activity – which was elevated for videos and deepfakes, but not for photos or dynamic morphs.

Neurosurgery & Consciousness: Bridging Science and Philosophy in the Age of AI

Overview of neurosurgery specialty interplay between neurology, psychiatry and neurosurgery. Discussion on benefits and disadvantages of classifications. Presentation of sub-specialties: trauma, oncology, functional, pediatric, vascular and spine. How does an ordinary day of a neurosurgeon look like; outpatient clinic, emergencies, pre/intra/post operative patient care. An ordinary operation. Myth-busting and practical insights of every day practice. An ordinary operation. Hint for research on clinical problems to be solved. The coming ethical frontiers of neuroprosthetics. In part two we will explore the explanatory gap and its significance. We will review the more than 200 theories of the hard problem of consciousness, from the prevailing to the unconventional. Finally, we are going to reflect on the AI advancements and the claims of LLMs becoming conscious

Memory Decoding Journal Club: Reconstructing a new hippocampal engram for systems reconsolidation and remote memory updating

Join us for the Memory Decoding Journal Club, a collaboration between the Carboncopies Foundation and BPF Aspirational Neuroscience. This month, we're diving into a groundbreaking paper: 'Reconstructing a new hippocampal engram for systems reconsolidation and remote memory updating' by Bo Lei, Bilin Kang, Yuejun Hao, Haoyu Yang, Zihan Zhong, Zihan Zhai, and Yi Zhong from Tsinghua University, Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, IDG/McGovern Institute of Brain Research, and Peking Union Medical College. Dr. Randal Koene will guide us through an engaging discussion on these exciting findings and their implications for neuroscience and memory research.

Decoding ketamine: Neurobiological mechanisms underlying its rapid antidepressant efficacy

Unlike traditional monoamine-based antidepressants that require weeks to exert effects, ketamine alleviates depression within hours, though its clinical use is limited by side effects. While ketamine was initially thought to work primarily through NMDA receptor (NMDAR) inhibition, our research reveals a more complex mechanism. We demonstrate that NMDAR inhibition alone cannot explain ketamine's sustained antidepressant effects, as other NMDAR antagonists like MK-801 lack similar efficacy. Instead, the (2R,6R)-hydroxynorketamine (HNK) metabolite appears critical, exhibiting antidepressant effects without ketamine's side effects. Paradoxically, our findings suggest an inverted U-shaped dose-response relationship where excessive NMDAR inhibition may actually impede antidepressant efficacy, while some level of NMDAR activation is necessary. The antidepressant actions of ketamine and (2R,6R)-HNK require AMPA receptor activation, leading to synaptic potentiation and upregulation of AMPA receptor subunits GluA1 and GluA2. Furthermore, NMDAR subunit GluN2A appears necessary and possibly sufficient for these effects. This research establishes NMDAR-GluN2A activation as a common downstream effector for rapid-acting antidepressants, regardless of their initial targets, offering promising directions for developing next-generation antidepressants with improved efficacy and reduced side effects.

COSYNE 2025

The COSYNE 2025 conference was held in Montreal with post-conference workshops in Mont-Tremblant, continuing to provide a premier forum for computational and systems neuroscience. Attendees exchanged cutting-edge research in a single-track main meeting and in-depth specialized workshops, reflecting Cosyne’s mission to understand how neural systems function.

FENS Forum 2024

Organised by FENS in partnership with the Austrian Neuroscience Association and the Hungarian Neuroscience Society, the FENS Forum 2024 will take place on 25–29 June 2024 in Vienna, Austria. The FENS Forum is Europe’s largest neuroscience congress, covering all areas of neuroscience from basic to translational research.

New Ideas - Request for Applications

The Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative supports bold, high-risk, high-reward ideas that could open new directions in autism science. Letters of intent are accepted on a rolling basis, with selected applicants invited to submit a full application for projects lasting up to two years.

EPSRC standard research grant, Nov 2023: responsive mode

EPSRC's responsive-mode standard research grant, 'Open - no closing date': applications are accepted continuously and batched internally for assessment. No specified upper limit on grant value or project length; EPSRC funds 80% of the full economic cost.

EPSRC New Investigator Award: applicant-led mode

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council supports early-career researchers making their first application as project lead to develop an independent research vision and establish a research group. Applications can address any EPSRC-remit field, including artificial intelligence, healthcare technologies, engineering, mathematical sciences, physical sciences, clean energy, security, and quantum technologies.

NSF 26-517: Core Research in Biological Sciences (BIO Core)

The National Science Foundation's BIO Core solicitation supports fundamental biological research across scales, including the neural basis of cognition. The new solicitation was posted on 17 August 2026, accepts proposals at any time, anticipates 250 to 300 awards, and replaces earlier core-program guidance in the Directorate for Biological Sciences.

MRC: research grant: applicant-led

MRC's applicant-led responsive research grant, explicitly 'Open - no closing date': submit when the application is ready. No upper funding limit — the amount should be appropriate to the project — for up to five years, with MRC funding 80% of full economic cost.

Division of Integrative Organismal Systems Core Programs (IOS)

NSF core-programs solicitation (NSF 24-546) supporting research on integrative organismal biology, including behavioral, developmental, neural and physiological systems. Proposals are accepted anytime, with an estimated $70,000,000 available per fiscal year across ~150 standard or continuing grants.

Fine-tuning hierarchical circuits through learned stochastic co-modulation

COSYNE 2022

Open-source solutions for research data management in neuroscience collaborations

Bernstein Conference 2024

Multi-task representations across human cortex transform along a sensory-to-motor hierarchy

COSYNE 2022

Stochastic Process Model derived indicators of overfitting for deep architectures: Applicability to small sample recalibration of sEMG decoders

Bernstein Conference 2024

On The Role Of Temporal Hierarchy In Spiking Neural Networks

Bernstein Conference 2024

Brain-wide manifold-organized hierarchical encoding of behaviors in C. elegans

Bernstein Conference 2024

Automated Research Workflows for Pose Estimation

Neuromatch 5

Two New Cytoarchitectonic Areas Identified on the Anterior Fusiform Gyrus

Bernstein Conference 2024

Non-feedforward architectures enable diverse multisensory computations

Bernstein Conference 2024

Human-like Behavior and Neural Representations Emerge in a Goal-driven Model of Overt Visual Search for Natural Objects

Bernstein Conference 2024

Research Methods in Cognition Studies & Phenomenology - Challenges and Opportunities

Neuromatch 5

Towards Discovering the Hierarchy of the Olfactory Perceptual Space via Hyperbolic Embeddings

COSYNE 2025

Orthogonal line attractors in the monkey frontoparietal cortex and RNNs support hierarchical decisions

COSYNE 2025

Toward hierarchical compositionality with shallow hierarchical networks

Bernstein Conference 2024

Where are the neural architectures? The curse of structural flatness in neural network modelling

Neuromatch 5