News

We are delighted to announce that Athena Akrami, SWC Group Leader, has been selected by the European Research Council (ERC) to receive a Consolidator Grant. The award of €2 million over five years will enable Athena to continue to pursue her long-term research endeavours.

Neuroscientists have uncovered a key brain area in rats that encodes the value of economic choices when faced with the uncertainty of a lottery. This is the first time the causal role of frontal and parietal cortex has been tested in economic decision-making. The findings provide a foundation for understanding the neurobiology of risky decisions.

The Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at UCL is thrilled to announce that our Neurobiological Research Facility (NRF) team have been honoured at the Janet Wood Innovation Awards 2023.

We are excited to announce that Dr Tim Behrens has joined the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre as a Group Leader. The Behrens Lab at SWC will focus on how brains learn and represent knowledge about the world to enable flexible behaviours. Tim will also retain a portion of his group at the University of Oxford.

Neuroscientists have uncovered how exploratory actions enable animals to learn their spatial environment more efficiently. Their findings could help build better AI agents that can learn faster and require less experience.

Joint SWC/GCNU Group Leader Associate Professor Andrew Saxe has been named a 2023 Blavatnik Awards in the UK Finalist in Life Sciences. Dr Saxe was nominated for his fundamental contributions to the study of deep neural networks, which provide insight into representation learning—the method by which systems discover and organise knowledge—in artificial and natural systems.

Researchers at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre and Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at UCL have revealed a brain mechanism that mice use to instinctively escape to shelter when faced with a threat. This is the first time that neuroscientists have been able to find such a clear link between spatial goals and actions.

The Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at UCL was delighted to host a celebration event to mark the successful completion of the first year of the new STEM programme, In2research, from social mobility charity In2scienceUK. The event celebrated the achievements of the 50 talented participants in the 2021/22 cohort and gave thanks to partners, supporters and volunteers, who were integral to the success of the inaugural year of the programme.

SWC Group Leader Dr Chunyu Ann Duan has been awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant of €1.5 million over five years. The proposal selected for funding will cover research on decision-making in a social context.

The Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at UCL is delighted to announce that we have received full accreditation from the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC) International.

Neuroscientists at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at UCL explored how individual neurons in mice are influenced by two different cognitive and behavioural states – attention and running. In a new study published today in Neuron, SWC researchers found that spatial attention and running influence individual neurons independently with different dynamics.