Learning and performance can be enhanced by locomotor activity in mice, concludes a new study. The scientists sought to understand the cellular changes in the cerebellum that accompany learning.

The finding could well apply to other forms of cerebellar learning in humans – Catarina Albergaria

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For decades the neuroscience community has been baffled by the existence of dense connections in the brain that seem to be going “backwards”. These connections, which span extensively across distant areas of the neocortex – the part of the brain responsible for higher cognitive functions – are clearly conveying important information. But until now, the organisation of the connections and therefore their possible role, was largely unknown.

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: Gautam Agarwal
Lab: Systems Neuroscience | Mainen Lab
Project: A video-game-based task to study complex skill-learning in an online population

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Among this year’s new members, there is just one scientist working in Portugal – and he is at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown.

Eduardo Moreno, from the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown (CCU), in Lisbon, is one of the 53 scientists to have been elected this year permanent members of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), this institution announced today (Monday, May 14th). He is the only new permanent member working in Portugal.

For years, Eduardo Moreno has been unraveling how competition for survival between cells in an organism plays out to make it develop healthily – or, as it ages, give rise to cancer and other diseases.

For me, [cell competition] was just natural selection at work inside the organism. – Eduardo Moreno

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Do the microbes that live inside our gut have access to areas of our body we might feel more private about, such as our brain?

Scientists at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown discovered that they actually do!

In this episode of Science Snapshots, Carlos Ribeiro, head of the Behaviour and Metabolism lab, talks about how his team found that gut bacteria “speak” with the brain to control a key aspect of behaviour: food choice.

Why do treatments with antidepressants like Prozac seem to work better when combined with behavioral therapies, which promote the learning of positive behaviors by the depressed patient? A new study suggests a possible explanation.

The study found that serotonin enhances the speed of learning. When serotonin neurons were activated artificially, using light, it made mice quicker to adapt their behavior in a situation that required such flexibility. Zach Mainen

When she was a young graduate student in biotechnology, Luísa Vasconcelos decided to do neuroscience research for a living. She hasn’t stopped since. At the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, she studies the underpinnings of innate behavior.

Behavior allows us to study a problem at several levels, and this is attractive because, ultimately, it is rewarding to see the whole picture. – Luísa Vasconcelos

Carlos Ribeiro and Leopoldo Petreanu have been awarded Health Research la Caixa Grants of nearly 500,000 euros each to coordinate scientific projects. The grants are attributed to by the Foundation of la Caixa bank, Spain’s third largest financial institution. This is the first edition to include project coordinators working in Portugal.

A third researcher, Mireia Castilho, has been awarded 25,000 euros to collaborate with another la Caixa-funded project, this one coordinated by a group based in Bilbao, Spain.

How can scarce resources sustain the multitude of species that exists on Earth? Despite recent progress, this enigma of biodiversity has not yet been solved. Now, scientists at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, in Lisbon, Portugal, developed a new mathematical model which may be the answer.

These ideas are still largely theoretical, so we need to test how well the competition mechanisms proposed in the paper describe what happens when real species compete, but early results look quite promising. – Andres Laan