Features – The Transmitter

Five years after a groundbreaking paper, can a young field move beyond piecemeal studies?

Neurons have long taken top billing in memory, but researchers are making the case for astrocytes.

Yale University claims its STEP platform might be able to deliver gene-editing tools into the brain via multiple routes. Researchers are eager to see more.

When a researcher solved a logistical problem by going rogue, the idea proved remarkably infectious.

The Transmitter presents a portrait of the field through four lenses: its focus, its output, its people and its funding.

For decades, scientists have been teased by the strange but inaccessible cephalopod visual system. Now, thanks to a technological breakthrough from a lab in Oregon, data are finally coming straight from the octopus brain.

Author lists on papers have ballooned, and it’s getting hard to discern contribution.

Postdoctoral researchers sponsored by the National Institutes of Health now toil longer than ever before, for less money. They are responding accordingly.

Our chosen stories include tales about research misconduct in the lab, a neuroscientist working at the end of the world, and the passing of neuroanatomy’s “great-grandfather,” Harvey Karten.