Linda Partridge envisions a future where people would just die of old age and not of the diseases that so frequently plague or seriously incapacitate the ageing human population. She and her team at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Cologne, Germany, are currently evaluating the health benefits of three different human drugs on ageing mice.

To celebrate Champalimaud Research’s tenth anniversary, a photo exhibit and an accompanying video series bring you snapshots of its scientists and their work.

SNAPSHOT 2: INTERCEPTING TUMOUR COMMUNICATIONS

New technologies are giving neuroscientists a grip on the working brain that a few years ago would have seemed impossible to achieve. But, argues John Krakuer, as they marvel at the technological breakthroughs, they are ignoring a crucial component of the study of behavior: the careful “dissection” of the behavior itself.

Three investigators from the Champalimaud Research (CR) Programme were awarded European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grants, each for the sum of two million euros.

Who are today’s scientists? Inspired by the project “Humans of New York”, Ar Magazine turns the spotlight on individual humans of science every month.

Name: Tony Bell
Projects: Neural data analysis, multilayer unsupervised learning, the multilevel organization of living systems and the role of water.

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Photo credit: Marina Fridman

It is well-known that mice infected by the parasite Toxoplasma gondii lose their innate aversion to cats. New research is now starting to shed more light on the precise nature of the behavioral changes that this tiny unicellular organism elicits in rodents as it literally takes control of their brain.

_Imagine these animals in the wild. They have difficulties activating a cautious behavior._- Cristina Afonso

Applications for the 2017 INDP Programme are now open!

Applications for 8 Doctoral fellowships in the 2017-2018 class of the International Neuroscience Doctoral Programme (INDP), hosted at the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown (CCU) in Lisbon, Portugal will be open from December 11th, 2017 to January 11th, 2018. Selected students are guaranteed a stipend and tuition support for 4 years.

EMBO announces today (December 18, 2017) seven life scientists as recipients of EMBO Installation Grants. These grants will support the early-career researchers in establishing their independent laboratories in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Poland, Portugal and Turkey.

Bruno Costa-Silva, head of CR’s Systems Oncology lab, was one of the seven awardees. His project will study the association of Exosome populations with liver metastasis.

Motor behavior could be formed from a range of continuous possible movements. But it could also be constituted by sequences of distinct, discrete movement types. New results suggest that the latter is the case, at least for zebrafish larvae.

Much like music is made of notes, the complex behaviors of zebrafish larvae, such as hunting or social interactions, are formed from a small set of movements types arranged in specific sequences. – João Marques

From chemistry to physics to neuroscience, from Spain to the United Kingdom, back to Spain again and then to Portugal, Gonzalo de Polavieja’s career has certainly had more than a twist. Since 2014, he is the principal investigator, or PI, of the Collective Behavior Lab at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, in Lisbon.