Blog | Sainsbury Wellcome Centre

Understanding sensory and gastrointestinal differences in autism spectrum disorder

Many people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience sensory abnormalities and gastrointestinal issues, but the neural circuit disruptions underlying these differences are not well understood. Following her SWC Seminar, Professor Lauren Orefice shares her key findings and the potential clinical implications of her work.

How does space travel impact astronauts’ kidneys? SWC Advanced Microscopy team aids new study

In a pioneering study that bridges the realms of space exploration and biomedical science, a UCL-led team of researchers embarked upon a mission to understand the effects of space travel on kidney health. The SWC Advanced Microscopy team played a pivotal role in this research, providing cutting-edge imaging techniques that were crucial to the study’s success.

Inaugural symposium brings animal technicians together

Organised by Eleni Amaniti and Amy Lynch of the SWC Neurobiological Research Facility, the Career Pathways for Animal Technicians Symposium sought to gather together voices from various parts of the animal technology and husbandry industry to: inspire career pathways for young technicians, provide space for further networking, and collectively confirm best practices for animal research in the biomedical sciences.

Neuroinformatics Unit paves way for open science initiatives

The Neuroinformatics Unit works closely with researchers at SWC and the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit on multiple projects spanning the enhancement of BrainGlobe, standardisation of data structures, and refinement of pipelines for microscopy images, among others. Their ethos? Open science.

Gaze and cooperative strategy: interareal interactions in the social brain

In this Q&A, SWC Seminar speaker Professor Steve Chang discusses his journey into studying the neural bases of social interaction. He shares his work developing an automated cooperation paradigm for marmosets, discovering different frequency modules for processing rewards in the brain, and more.

Tunnelling into social codes of the bat hippocampus

In the evolving landscape of neuroscience, understanding brain function in naturalistic settings has been challenging. Professor Nachum Ulanovsky sheds light on the recent breakthroughs overcoming these obstacles, focusing on his research with bats. He elaborates on his team’s discovery of how the hippocampus codes social variables and recent experiments on an uninhabited island in Tanzania.

Public Engagement

Navigating real-world challenges at the Neuronauts School Club

First organised in 2023, the Neuronauts School Club has invited London secondary school students to increase accessibility, excitement, and career prospects in science.

Painting of two mice interacting, one with Repix

Repix: facilitating chronic Neuropixels recordings

When studying social behaviours, it is crucial that animals engage in natural interactions. But carrying out neural recordings in freely moving animals can be challenging. To solve these problems, a large team of scientists at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at UCL collaborated with expert engineers in the SWC fabrication laboratory to create Repix.

Tracking behaviour in 3D

In his recent SWC Seminar, Dr Timothy Dunn presented a new approach for multi-animal 3D tracking and social behaviour analysis in rats. In this Q&A, Dr Dunn explains how his new approach differs from previous tools and the implications of 3D tracking on understanding autism and Parkinson’s.

Unveiling camouflage and decoding neural mechanisms in cuttlefish

In this Q&A Dr Tessa Montague, the last 2023/24 ENSS speaker, shares insights into her fascination with cuttlefish, the challenges and triumphs of studying them, and the innovative methods employed to understand their camouflage behaviour and neural mechanisms.

Image of green layer 5 pyramidal cell with text overlaid 'SWC Speaker Series'

Synapse pruning in development and Alzheimer’s

How can understanding synapse pruning in development help tackle neurodegenerative disease? In a recent SWC Seminar, Professor Carla Shatz demonstrated how looking at fundamental questions in neuroscience can lead to important discoveries about diseases such as Alzheimer’s. In this Q&A, she shares more.

Exploring the gap between knowledge and performance

What we know in our heads is not always smoothly translated into how we perform. In a recent SWC Seminar, Dr Kishore Kuchibhotla shared his lab’s work investigating the strategies and insights animals may use during sensorimotor learning. In this Q&A, he hints at how such findings could be implied in our own learning, his career trajectory, and how that’s informed his research direction.