Thanks to technological advances, neuroscientists can now collect mouth-watering amounts of data, simultaneously recording the activity of hundreds of neurons in real-time. But what's the use of having this "big neuro data" if we can't make sense of it?

Who hasn't felt the temptation to fling a lengthy manual into the bin, or just drive on instead of asking for directions? After all, following instructions is often tiresome, and we can just figure it out on our own… Or can we? A study published today (May 19th) in the scientific journal Nature Human Behaviour challenges prevalent theories about our capacity to solve complex problems and how certain mental disorders influence it.

Sabine Renninger

POST DOCTORAL RESEARCHER, VISION TO ACTION LAB

"Have you ever walked to school or work and suddenly seen something that has always been there but that you never noticed before? Since childhood, such moments have made me wonder about what the world really looks like and what is just my perception of it.

A fruit fly walks on a small styrofoam ball fashioned into a floating 3D treadmill. The room is completely dark, and yet, an electrode recording visual neurons in the fly’s brain relays a mysterious stream of neural activity, rising and falling like a sinusoidal wave.

When Eugenia Chiappe, a neuroscientist at the Champalimaud Foundation in Portugal, first saw these results, she had a hunch her team had made an exceptional discovery. They were recording from visual neurons, but the room was dark, so there was no visual signal that could drive the neurons in that manner. 

The team, headed by Manuel Valiente from CNIO, which counts with the contributions of scientists from other Research Centres, namely the Champalimaud Foundation, found that a simple blood test can help detect patients with resistance to brain radiotherapy and identified a drug that might reverse it. A multi-centre clinical study is now under way to validate the predictive potential of this biomarker through the National Brain Metastasis Network (Spanish acronym: RENACER).

The study is being published in Nature Medicine this week.

We've all been there… Trying to reach an actual person when calling customer support, getting a baby to fall asleep, looking for something good to watch on TV… At some point, you invariably find yourself wondering -- do my actions actually make a difference? 

The Lancet Breast Cancer Commission, a worldwide multidisciplinary team of leaders and patient advocates, published a few days ago a Comment article in the medical journal The Lancet calling for urgent action to ensure treatment equity for women with breast cancer no matter who they are and where they live. Fátima Cardoso, internationally renowned Director of the Breast Unit at the Champalimaud Foundation, is one of the authors and representative of the larger work group.

Ana Luísa Correia joined the CF in December 2021. Prior to that, she worked for several years at the Basel University Hospital in Switzerland. During her stay there, she made breakthrough discoveries with potentially important therapeutic implications. She intends to pursue this line of work at the CF.

In this special Ar event, as part of the Emotions Brain Forum series celebrating Women in Science, we invite you to take a broad look at emotions with us.

We will explore how emotions help individuals, from insects to humans, relate to the world and get a feel of the state of their surroundings.