Through the provision of these two-year collaborative research grants, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) programme aims to accelerate cutting-edge research and technology in metabolism and metabolic physiology. The objective of these grants is to map, measure, and integrate metabolism across different scales—from molecules and organelles to cells and tissues—deepening our understanding of human biology, and to investigate the metabolic processes that maintain physiological homeostasis.

Understanding Treatment-Resistant Depression

Treatment-resistant depression (TRD) is a particularly challenging form of major depressive disorder. As Albino Oliveira-Maia, head of the Champalimaud Foundation’s Neuropsychiatry Unit and the study’s national coordinator for Portugal, explains, “TRD is defined as the persistence of depressive symptoms despite adequate courses of at least two different antidepressant medications”. Despite repeated therapeutic attempts, these patients’ depressive symptoms remain.

On October 1st, people in over 150 countries across the globe will celebrate the power of music to unite and contribute towards a more peaceful, joyful, and harmonious society during International Music Day. Here at the Champalimaud Foundation, we have several budding musicians, so we asked one of them to give us some insight into combining music with science.

Why we have a brain

“The brain’s primary function is movement”, explains Claudia Feierstein, lead author of the study published today in Current Biology. “Plants don’t need a brain because they don’t move. Yet, even for something as seemingly simple as eye movements, the brain’s role remains largely enigmatic. Our goal is to illuminate this ‘black box’ of motion and to decode how neural activity controls eye and body movements, using zebrafish as our model organism”.

Champalimaud Foundation (Fundação D. Anna de Sommer Champalimaud e Dr. Carlos Montez Champalimaud), a private, non-profit research institution in Lisbon, Portugal, is looking for a Junior Digital Pathology Scientist to join our Histopathology Platform team, at the Champalimaud Research Programme. 

The selected candidate will

Work closely with senior experimental pathologists and laboratory staff to support a variety of research projects, in the field of digital pathology. Responsibilities will include:

From Aristotle’s musings on the nature of time to Einstein’s theory of relativity, humanity has long pondered: how do we perceive and understand time? The theory of relativity posits that time can stretch and contract, a phenomenon known as time dilation. Just as the cosmos warps time, our neural circuits can stretch and compress our subjective experience of time. As Einstein famously quipped, “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute”.

The exploration of alternative therapeutics for hard-to-treat mental health disorders has brought into focus an array of psychedelics such as psilocybin, present in ‘magic mushrooms’, and LSD, substances once associated more with counterculture than clinical practice. Alongside ‘atypical’ psychedelics like ketamine and MDMA, these substances are increasingly being recognised for their potential therapeutic attributes.

The Constant Chatter of Neurons

“The brain isn’t like a computer that turns off when it’s not doing a particular task”, explains Alfonso Renart, the senior author of the study published in eLife. “There’s always a kind of background hum, a baseline activity that can sometimes make it seem as if the brain is chattering to itself”. The team’s study lifts the lid on how that baseline activity, the continuous stream of electrical impulses sent by neurons, impacts behaviour and decision-making.

Many animals rely on smell to identify and locate objects in their surroundings and to respond appropriately. To investigate this phenomenon further, Greg Jefferis’ group in the LMB’s Neurobiology Division established a collaboration with the Behavior and Metabolism Lab, lead by Carlos Ribeiro, at the Champalimaud Foundation (CF) and the group of  Drosophila Connectomics at Cambridge University and together studied Drosophila flies.