Why Adult Plasticity Matters

Much like young children who swiftly acquire languages in their early years, our visual system also has a “critical period” during the first few years of life where rapid development occurs. After this time, changes become more difficult, following the old adage, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. Indeed, many treatments aimed at restoring vision, such as those addressing congenital cataracts or “lazy eye”, are only effective before the age of 7.

That said, this definition has been widening throughout the years to include potential chemopreventive substances that are not necessarily drugs. So-called “nutraceuticals”, such as dietary fiber, prebiotics, probiotics, polyunsaturated fatty acids, antioxidants (such as vitamins) and different types of herbal or natural foods (dietary supplements) are also being studied for cancer chemoprevention. However, to date, the efficacy of these substances has not been confirmed.

Since 2012, August 1 has been designated as World Lung Cancer Day. The international lung health community uses the day to raise awareness and spread information about the disease’s risk factors, symptoms, diagnosis and treatment.

Dr. Susana Simões, of the Champalimaud Foundation’s Lung Unit, joined us for a conversation about this disease, which is responsible for more cancer deaths than any other.

Interview with Isabel Palmeirim, Director of Education at the Champalimaud Foundation.

Isabel Palmeirim, who was until recently the director of the Faculty of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences and of the Medicine Course at the University of Algarve, was appointed, in June, Director of Education of the Champalimaud Foundation (CF).

Around 600 million people around the world play chess, with 70% of adults having played at some point in their lives; and as 20th July is International Chess Day, we spoke to Champalimaud Researchers Carlos Stein Brito and T. Quendera to find out more about why they play and what the game means to them as scientists.

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”.

In CheckUp #14, we talked about the different types of cancer treatments with ionizing radiation: internal and external radiotherapies. We promised we would return to this subject to talk in more detail about a special type of internal radiotherapy: molecular radiotherapy. This activity is integrated in Nuclear Medicine, a medical specialty that, in Oncology, uses radiopharmaceuticals to diagnose, treat, and evaluate the response of cancers to existing or new drugs.

The 2023 retreat took place at the Grande Hotel do Luso, in the beautiful Serra do Buçaco, from 29 May to 1 June, with the participation of more than 250 CR members. The theme of this year’s retreat was Embracing Multitudes: a Game of Translation which aimed at building bridges between the diverse research areas of CR, from neuroscience, cancer biology and immunology, to translational clinical research. The focus was on the diversity that shapes our institute and how to create a cohesive and collaborative community.

Interview with Nikos Papanikolaou, principal investigator of the Computational Clinical Imaging Group.

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.