“The spinal cord isn’t just a passive relay station executing brain commands”, says Susana Lima, Principal Investigator of CF’s Neuroethology Lab and senior author of the study. “It integrates sensory inputs, responds to arousal, and adjusts its output based on the animal’s internal state. It’s much more sophisticated than we imagined”.

Postdoctoral researchers do much more than develop research projects. They are key members of our labs, mentoring colleagues, communicating findings, and helping secure funding, making vital contributions both to scientific advances and the broader functioning of the research community.

#PostdocAppreciationWeek, celebrated internationally, recognises the talent, dedication, and achievements of postdoctoral researchers worldwide. It’s a time to celebrate their hard work, highlight their impact, and thank them for their invaluable contributions to the scientific community.

Nicole asks a provocative question: what if treating brain disorders is less like replacing a broken part in a machine, and more like trying to redirect a hurricane? Nicole argues that only by embracing the brain as a complex adaptive system can we hope to make real progress.

ERC Starting Grants are among Europe’s most competitive research awards. They are designed to support promising early-career researchers with the potential to transform their fields, providing the resources needed to establish independent teams and pursue ambitious research programmes.

For 2025, the ERC Scientific Council earmarked a budget of €761 million to support 478 Starting Grants across disciplines. In the Life Sciences alone, 137 proposals were selected for funding from a total of 1099 applications.

The Champalimaud Foundation (CF) played an important role in this achievement. Not only was CF’s Systems Neuroscience Lab one of the 12 experimental labs where the large-scale recordings were carried out, but CF also hosted much of the engineering team that designed and maintained the infrastructure that made such an unprecedented dataset possible.

An international and multidisciplinary team, led by researchers from the Champalimaud Foundation, in Lisbon, has developed an artificial intelligence algorithm that improves the reliability of prostate cancer detection based solely on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans – that is, without resorting to a biopsy. Their findings were published today, 15th of August, in the journal Radiology: Imaging Cancer.

“This is a historic step,” says Prof. Dr. Robert Schoevers, head of psychiatry at the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) and principal investigator of PsyPal. “After many months of preparation, we are thrilled to begin working directly with patients.”

The results of the most recent European Research Council (ERC)  Advanced Grants have been announced today (June 17th). In Portugal, the ERC selected two new projects in the area of ​​life sciences, which in total will receive 5M€. 

The ERC funding, worth in total €721M, will go to 281 leading researchers across Europe. In the case of life sciences, 732 proposals were submitted and 83 were selected for funding, which represents a success rate of approximately 11%. 

From philosophical zombies and the purpose of dreaming, to measuring consciousness like temperature and why brains aren’t computers, in Episode 4 Seth unpacks the idea that our experience of reality – and of ourselves – is a kind of waking dream, a “controlled hallucination”, shaped by prediction, perception, and the body’s primal drive to stay alive.

His theory of what it means to ‘be you’ challenges how we understand perception – and turns what you thought you knew about yourself on its head.

The problem with averages

Imagine you’re deciding whether to wait in line for your favourite meal at a busy restaurant or grab a quick snack at the nearest café. Your brain weighs not just how good the meal might be, but also how long it will take to get it.