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?

Today, the general view about the role emotions play in our lives has radically evolved, and the importance of emotions throughout the animal kingdom has finally been recognised. Charles Darwin already intuited 150 years ago when he wrote that emotions are “a universal means of communication” across the animal kingdom. As for us humans, we now know that emotions literally shape every aspect of our lives, including things as unique to our species as rationality and morality.

A woman who’s just had one of her breasts entirely removed, which forever leaves her with a huge scar across half of her chest, might be very satisfied with the result. If this was her only option, what obviously most matters to her is to be rid of the disease. But for another, who has submitted to a more advanced breast surgery – that is equally successful in clinical terms, but also more conservative and reconstructive – might on the other hand find her new look highly unsatisfactory in spite of the aesthetic results of the surgery being flawless.

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.

The title of the new book is “Technology at the Service of the Humanization of Oncological Care”. It was launched during the V Champalimaud Oncological Nursing Conference, held on May 4th 2022 at the Champalimaud Foundation, in Lisbon.

The event should have taken place in 2020, marking the WHO’s International Nursing Day by commemorating the bicentenary of the birth (on 12 May 2020) of Florence Nightingale, the “mother of all nurses”.

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. 

Yesterday, May 5th, at 3p.m. (Lisbon time), surgeon Pedro Gouveia was in the operating room, at the Breast Unit of the Champalimaud Foundation, in Lisbon, ready to start, as in so many other occasions, performing breast cancer surgery. Meanwhile, another surgeon from the same unit, the young Spaniard Rogelio Andrés-Luna, was attending the operation, and intervening, when needed, by supplying Pedro Gouveia with additional information to help him – and even guide his gestures. Everything seems to be business as usual – but it isn’t.

Zoom-In on Champalimaud: Ana Carolina Pádua

I hold a Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering and a PhD in Molecular Biosciences from NOVA University, Lisbon. After completing my PhD project, I moved to Texas (USA) for an internship in High-Performance Computing. This experience allowed me to discover how supercomputers can contribute to making science more efficient and productive.