News
New paper from Fairhall Lab looks at the role of dopamine in learning and motivation
by Lila Levinson Neuroscience is rarely straightforward enough to describe in a catchy phrase. This is exemplified by dopamine, known popularly as the “pleasure molecule.” One of the few neurotransmitters to make its way into popular culture (it is referenced in over 90 band names on Spotify), dopamine is a key player in the reward mechanisms that make us feel good when our actions result in the desired effects or we experience something [...]
New paper from CNC faculty examines how insect wing structure impacts sensory feedback during flight
A new paper in PLoS Computational Biology from Washington Research Foundation postdoctoral fellow Ali Weber and CNC faculty members Tom Daniel and Bing Brunton examines how insect wing structure and mechanosensory neurons together determine optimal sensing performance during flight. Insects require sensory feedback to maintain stable flight. The team noted that while the mechanical properties of insect wings have been studied extensively, we have little understanding of the forces driving the evolution of [...]
Retina ‘hardwired’ to predict path of moving objects
CNC faculty member Fred Rieke was recently featured by UW Medicine News, highlighting a new paper in Nature Neuroscience. The paper was co-authored by UW undergraduate students Belle Liu and Arthur Hong (co-first authors) and Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology Michael Manookin. (republished from the UW Medicine Newsroom, written by Michael McCarthy) Neural circuits in the primate retina can generate the information needed to predict the path of a moving object before visual signals [...]
Announcing Neuro Book Club
CNC Co-Director Adrienne Fairhall and IST Austria professor Tim Vogels are launching a monthly online book club focusing on neuroscience. The first meeting will be on May 10th at 10am Pacific time and will feature a reading and Q&A with Grace Lindsay, Research Fellow at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at UCL and author of Models of the Mind: How Physics, Engineering and Mathematics Have Shaped Our Understanding of the Brain. For more information and to [...]
Hosted screening of In Silico, May 5
UW CNC will be hosting a private screening of the new film In Silico from director Noah Hutton on May 5 at 7 PM. In 2013, neuroscientist Henry Markram led a team of neuroscientists in a successful billion-euro funding bid for the Human Brain Project. Enchanted by Markram’s dazzling vision of a new approach to brain science– the construction of a computational replica of a human brain– director Noah Hutton embarked upon a [...]
The Shanahan Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Interface of Data and Neuroscience – applications due April 15
In partnership with the Allen Institute and UW eScience Center, the CNC is now accepting applications for the Shanahan Foundation Fellowship at the Interface of Data and Neuroscience. The fellowships are funded by the Shanahan Family Foundation and the Allen Institute. Overview The Shanahan Foundation Fellowship at the Interface of Data and Neuroscience is a new, three-year post-doctoral fellowship program that aims to: Integrate data scientists in neuroscience research Challenge traditional approaches to neuroscience Provide [...]