SWC Speaker series - Weizhe Hong - Blog Banner
Q&A

Untangling the neural bases of prosocial behaviour

How do you go about studying the neural basis of empathy and prosociality and what techniques are needed to understand interbrain dynamics at the cellular level? Dr Weizhe Hong recently gave a SWC Seminar to discuss his group’s work uncovering the neural mechanisms of prosocial behaviour.

10 July 2023
Q&A

Learning from models of suboptimal learning

Modelling a complex behaviour like learning can leave out some aspects of the data. Professor Peter Dayan recently gave a seminar at SWC where he shared his work on modelling the behaviour of subjects in a couple of well-established experimental tasks. In this Q&A, he goes into more detail about the models he uses and the role each one plays.

21 June 2023
Blog

Motivated mice matter: Refining fluid control

How can fluid control be made better for both animals and the science? The SWC/Gatsby 3Rs Group teamed up with the NC3Rs to run a half-day workshop at SWC, bringing together experienced researchers and experts from across the UK.

15 June 2023
Blog

Crossing boundaries: from the blood-brain barrier to the disciplines of science

When Viktor Plattner first met visiting scholar Viviana Gradinaru at SWC they spoke about an exciting new blood-brain barrier (BBB) crossing virus in development in her lab at Caltech. Viktor was eager to try out the new adeno-associated virus (AAV) in his neuroscience research in rats. He shared the resulting confocal images with Viviana’s team, which were published in a Nature Communications paper. This initial collaboration led to a pioneering new direction for his research project in the Akrami lab at SWC.

13 June 2023
Q&A

Exploring the four realms of existence

In a recent SWC seminar, Professor Joseph LeDoux proposed a new framework for characterising our existence, made up of four different realms – biological, neurobiological, cognitive and conscious. In this Q&A, he explains how the four realms relate to each other and the implications for neuroscience and the higher-order theory of consciousness.

1 June 2023
SWC Speaker series - Zeynep Okray - Blog Banner
Q&A

Multisensory learning: insights from fruit flies

How does the brain integrate sensory information from different modalities during learning and in what way does this relate to memory performance? In this Q&A, SWC Emerging Neuroscientist Seminar Series (ENSS) speaker Dr Zeynep Okray and her research colleague Dr Pedro Jacob, explain their research in fruit flies to tackle these big research questions.

23 May 2023
SWC Speaker series - Megha Sehgal - Blog Banner
Q&A

Memory linking in dendritic branches

In the third Emerging Neuroscientists Seminar Series (ENSS) talk of 2022/23, Dr Megha Sehgal shared her work exploring dendritic mechanisms of memory linking over time. In this Q&A, she encourages future ENSS applicants and explains how her work furthers the understanding of learning and memory at the sub-neuronal level.

18 May 2023
Heron - Blog Banner
Blog

Developing Heron, the progeny of Bonsai and ROS

Taking an idea for an experiment and bringing it to life, from scratch, is no easy feat. But what if there was a platform that enabled you to take your mental schema of any desired experiment and construct the necessary hardware and software in a way that results in a clean, easy-to-understand code base that also deals well with subsequent updates?

3 May 2023
SWC Speaker series - Ning-long Xu - Blog Banner
Q&A

How do neural circuits implement flexible decisions?

When you visit a country that drives on the opposite side of the road than you usually do, you are able to quickly adapt. How does the brain allow us to apply such rule-dependent flexible behaviour? In this Q&A, recent SWC seminar speaker, Dr Ning-long Xu explains his research to understand context-dependent flexible behaviour.

27 April 2023
SWC Speaker series - Ahmed El Hady - Blog Banner
Q&A

Unravelling the diversity of foraging strategies

Foraging for food is critical for survival. This ubiquitous natural behaviour involves multiple different cognitive computations. Recent SWC Seminar speaker, Dr Ahmed El Hady, is working to unravel the diversity of foraging strategies across environments.

25 April 2023
SWC Speaker series - Neir Esehl - Blog Banner
Q&A

Probing the role of dopamine in motivational states

How can an economics concept about consumption and cost be applied to understanding motivational states in the brain? In a recent SWC Seminar, Professor Neir Eshel shared his research on how dopamine release in the reward system of the brain depends on varying levels of cost and benefits in a given situation.

19 April 2023