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…
Lurking in our genomes are thousands of uncharacterized protein-coding genes. Even more genes can be included in this uncharacterized category if we were to exclude general one- or…
After nearly six decades of groundbreaking work in molecular biology, Richard Losick, the Maria Moors Cabot Research Professor of Biology, has published his final research paper in the…
Potassium ion channels are responsible for the rapid, selective flow of potassium (K+) ions through cell membranes, making it possible for spikes of electric activity (action potentials) to…
Giving zebrafish ketamine can stop them from “giving up” during tasks where trying to swim is futile. A new study led by researchers from the Engert Lab and…
The animal body is bilaterally symmetric, and most sense organs (eyes, ears and nose) occur in pairs. These paired sensory organs provide independent measurements of the environment in…
