A new paper in Nature (PDF) presents intriguing science on how dopamine neurons operate across multiple timescales to guide learning and decision-making. The study provides compelling experimental evidence…
Astrocytes, the most abundant non-neuronal cell type in the brain, have traditionally been thought of as passive supporters of neuronal circuits. However, in recent years, work from many…
Understanding how proteins interact inside living cells is fundamental to biology. Yet, visualizing these interactions with high precision—and at the scale and condition at which they actually occur—has…
A new study from Naoshige Uchida's MCB lab provides new insight into how the brain processes contingency during associative learning. Published in Nature Neuroscience (PDF), the study demonstrates…
Understanding how neurons encode information is one of the most pressing challenges in neuroscience. A new study from a multidisciplinary team including MCB researchers and those from the…
When faced with an unfamiliar threat, animals must make split-second decisions: should they flee to avoid potential harm or push forward in pursuit of a reward? This fundamental…
A new study from the Dulac Lab explores how one small brain region called the preoptic area (POA) of the hypothalamus changes through early life in mice. Though…
Loneliness is encoded in the brain in a way that closely resembles the neural architectures governing drives like thirst and hunger, researchers from the Dulac Lab report. A…
Sixty years ago, Harvard scientists David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel famously showed that altering visual input in young cats irreversibly changed the organization of neurons in the visual…
In domains as diverse as mastering video games, controlling robotic limbs, and finetuning ChatGPT, a family of approaches known collectively as “reinforcement learning” (RL) has revolutionized the field…
