These two programmes provide students with an integrative, state-of-the-art education in either Neuroscience or Cancer. A central goal of these programmes is to foster inquiry and discovery by encouraging active participation, critical thinking, and problem-solving among the students.

“Descending with his brother from the summit of Nanga Parbat, one of the ten highest mountains in the world, [Italian mountaineer] Reinhold Messner felt a third climber ‘descending with us, keeping a regular distance, a little to my right and a few steps away from me, just outside my field of vision’. Messner ‘could not see the figure’ but ‘was certain there was someone there,’ sensing ‘his presence’.

Launched during the European Vaccination Week in April 2021, the campaign was a collaborative effort between COLife, an alliance of six life sciences research institutions in the region of Lisbon and Oeiras, i3S in Porto, the Portuguese Society of Immunology (SPI), and Ciência Viva - the National Agency for Scientific and Technological Culture. Over a span of ten days, 121 scientists from various Portuguese institutions engaged in around 400 sessions, reaching audiences from all corners of Portugal and even extending digital outreach to East Timor and São Tomé and Príncipe.

For this edition of the contest, 11 groundbreaking biomedical and health projects spearheaded by research institutions and universities in Portugal were selected. This funding underscores the commitment of the “la Caixa” Foundation to champion projects of unparalleled excellence that stand to significantly benefit public health.

Listed below is more information about the seven awardees from the four COLife institutes and their projects.

Artificial Intelligence is all around us, accelerating medical drug development, selecting what content we see across social media or outclassing us on the most human of tasks from driving to medical diagnoses. The transformational power of AI has the potential to alter our society as profoundly as the agricultural and industrial revolutions, but how did we get here?

What is intelligence, and why do we seek to replicate it artificially? 

When did the AI revolution begin, and can you recall your first encounter with AI? 

If a teacup is steaming, you’ll wait a bit longer before drinking from it. And if your fingers get caught in the door, you'll be more careful next time. These are forms of associative learning, where a positive or negative experience leads to learning behavior. We know that our cerebellum is important in this form of learning. But how exactly does this work?

On behalf of the Champalimaud Research Programme on Digital Therapeutics led by Dr. John Krakauer and Dr. Joe Paton, we'd like to invite you to the workshop on interactive AI systems. At Digital Therapeutics group, our mission is to leverage cutting-edge technology to create evidence-based, personalised medical interventions to prevent, manage, or treat a broad spectrum of physical, mental, and behavioural conditions.

In this audio interview, Gonçalo explains how this grant will fund ongoing work on Lesional Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) that is being developed in collaboration with several members of the Neuropsychiatry Unit. The proposal is to use the results from this work to test a new treatment for OCD through transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which will include the Neuropsychiatry Unit’s first clinical trial using therapeutic TMS.
 

Listen to the full audio recording to find out more!

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.

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”.