News

SWC Group Leader Professor Tiago Branco has been awarded the Francis Crick Medal and Lecture by the Royal Society. Professor Branco was chosen for the award for making fundamental advances in the molecular, cellular and circuit bases of neuronal computation and for successfully linking these to animal behaviour.

In a new study, published in Nature, neuroscientists at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at UCL investigated the reciprocal interactions between two brain regions that represent visual working memory in mice. The team found that communication between these two loci of working memory, parietal cortex and premotor cortex, was co-dependent on instantaneous timescales.

Researchers at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at University College London have discovered that the hippocampus creates a vector-based representation to support animals to make optimal navigation decisions.

Art is often said to be a universal language. Allowing us to transcend boundaries and communicate complex ideas, it is appealing to explore how the interface between art, science and technology could open up new perspectives in neuroscience. Line of Sight, an interactive art installation unveiled today at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, offers us that exciting prospect.

The Schmidt Science Polymath program has today announced a $2.5m award to Associate Professor Andrew Saxe, joint Group Leader at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit and Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at University College London (UCL).

Understanding how brain areas communicate is one of the oldest questions in neuroscience. Researchers at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at UCL used causal techniques to uncover how two neocortical areas in the brain communicate with one another and found that their influence on each other changes over much faster-timescales than previously thought.

Neuroscientists at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at UCL observed the neuronal activity in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) while rats freely engaged with a variety of different ethological stimuli. Interactions with ethological stimuli are relevant to the animal’s survival and to the propagation of its genes, and include food, prey and conspecifics. In a new study, published today in Cell Reports, the researchers demonstrate strong responses to these classes of events in the BLA.

Neuroscientists at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at UCL studied the flexibility of escape behaviour in mice. In a new study, published today in Current Biology, the researchers show that, while escape behaviour can be robustly elicited in a laboratory setting, mice can nonetheless readily learn to suppress their escape response, effectively ignoring stimuli that are determined to pose no threat.

Neuroscientists at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at UCL explored how mice learn about their spatial environment and the behavioural strategies they use to take the shortest route to a shelter when they are scared. In a new study, published today in Current Biology, the researchers show that mice learn the shortest route to escape after only 10 minutes of exploring the environment and they do not need previous experience of threat.

Four world-leading scientists will talk about love and its neural basis in the brain. SWC is hosting the 7th Emotions Brain Forum, an itinerant series of conferences featuring women speakers only and dedicated to Nobel Laureate Rita Levi Montalcini.

We are deeply saddened that Richard Bennett, who served as a Computer Officer at SWC and GCNU from 2016, passed away last month at the age of 32. Richard passed away peacefully in his home in Woking and will be lovingly remembered by his partner Emma, family, friends and colleagues, especially those from the IT team, who worked closely with him over many years.

Could a PhD be the right fit for me? To help answer this question for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre was excited to host the first ever In2research Away Day.