Tag Archives: neuroscience

A conversation about neuroscience

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Nature research journal editors speak with Eric Nestler and Robert Greene about neurobiology and the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) 2017 annual meeting.

A conversation about neuroscience
presented by Nature Methods, Nature Neuroscience & Nature Communications

Sachin Ranade and Jean Zarate

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In advance of the 2017 annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, Jean Mary Zarate, an editor at Nature Neuroscience and Sachin Ranade , an editor at Nature Communications (photo, upper left) had the opportunity to speak with Eric Nestler, President of the Society for Neuroscience and researcher at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai and Robert Greene, a scientist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (photo, upper right).

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How will open data advance scientific discovery?

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SciData writing competition winner Sarah Lemprière explains how making the world’s deluge of data open will help science

As a global population we are generating more data than ever before. The International Data Corporation (IDC) estimates that by 2020 over 80 million gigabytes of data will be produced every minute. Each second, the world will generate enough data for a 50-year-long Netflix binge. Scientific investigation is a big part of that: every day huge amounts of data are generated on everything from the behaviour of supernovae to the 3D structure of proteins in the brain. When the world’s largest radio telescope comes online in 2020, it alone will produce 180,000 gigabytes of data a minute.

Previously, most of this scientific data would never be made public — the need to produce a compelling story for a journal article means that many datasets showing ‘negative’ results will never be published.

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Different “Me”s open up a new world on a personal and scientific level

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Haruka Yuminaga’s experience moving back to Japan has been a challenge — but has helped her become a better scientist.

A light grey room is filled with 23 grey desks, scattered in pens and books. In one corner sits a refrigerator packed with snacks. Next to it is a rice cooker. The walls are covered in pictures of fun lab memories. Amidst the clutter, some students joke and laugh; chat with a professor about their experimental procedures; analyze data on their laptops and unconsciously wrinkle their brows.

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The Ushiba lab

It is a usual morning at the Ushiba lab where I’m doing an internship this summer. I am a rising junior at Macalester College in Minnesota, USA. Before spending two years in a U.S college, I spent all my life in Japan, and expected being back in a Japanese lab to feel natural. But my assumption was wrong.

Reverse culture shock

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From Doctorate to Data Science: A very short guide

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Moving from a PhD into data science can be rewarding, but might be a bit of a culture shock

Are you one of the many PhDs considering a career in data science? I completed a PhD in neuroscience at Stanford three years ago; now I’m a data scientist at Uber. During my time in industry, I’ve found that the skills we develop in graduate school, such as analytical thinking, statistics, communication skills, and – oh yes – tenacity in the face of adversity, make us a great fit for the role.

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The co-authorship network of 8,500 doctors and scientists publishing on hepatitis C virus between 2008 and 2012. {credit}Andy Lamb/ Flickr{/credit}

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Q&A: Progress for Congress

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A neuroscientist wants to see change in the government — and he’s creating it.

Thomas Prigg is a brain cell circuitry researcher at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US. Now he’s using his science skills to fuel his campaign for Congress in 2018. He talks to Nikki Forrester. Continue reading →

Reflections on the L’Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science program

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Muireann Irish on celebrating diversity in science

Springtime in Paris seems a fitting backdrop for any awards ceremony but particularly so in the case of the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science program. I recently had the honour of attending the 2017 International Awards along with 14 other early career researchers from around the globe, as part of the L’Oréal-UNESCO International Rising Talents Fellowship.

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New neuroscience tools for team science in ‘big data’ era

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By Esther Landhuis

Wandering the convention center among 30,000-plus researchers, students and vendors at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego last November, I struggled to wrap my head around a feature I was writing for this week’s Nature, on managing big brain data. Mice, molecular biology and cell sorting reigned supreme in my former life as a bench scientist. Neurons, brain imaging, terabytes — not so much. So when it came time to find an entry into the vast universe of the brain, I latched onto something that seemed small and manageable: the fruit fly.

Ann-Shyn Chiang of National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, told the SFN crowd his team has spent a decade imaging 60,000 neurons in the Drosophila brain. The pictures produced 3D maps detailed enough to show which neurons control precise behaviors, such as shaking the head side to side (see video). But here’s the part that blew my mind: They aren’t even halfway done (flies have 135,000 brain neurons), and mapping the human brain with similar methods would take 17 million years!

Head shake behavior elicited by a 593.5-nm laser. Credit Po-Yen Hsiao and Ann-Shyn Chiang.

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Finding job satisfaction as a drug safety manager

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Steffen Schulz was completing his PhD in medical neuroscience when he realised he needed more job security than academia could offer. Now, he works as a drug safety manager in his native Berlin.

How did you get into biology?

Originally I was interested in the origin and the development and evolution of life. Then I shifted to questions like ‘why do animals and humans behave the way they do?’

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Steffen Schulz

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The “black box” effect in science communication

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To counter sensationalist journalism and to bring the public closer to the realities of research, science communication must focus on the how and why of science, says Naturejobs journalism competition winner Lev Tankelevitch.

In July 2016 scientists found out how to map the brain into dozens of new areas using neuroimaging. We also discovered that thousands of such brain scanning studies may be flawed. To someone lacking insight into neuroscience, these two equally important studies can seem conflicting. Although “science communication” happens everywhere, science can still feel like a black box to the public, mysteriously churning out breakthroughs which are packaged and relayed by a barrage of tweets and headlines.

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Finding job satisfaction as a science liaison

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How Sabine Blankenship went from neuroscience researcher to professional networker

After completing a PhD and postdoc in experimental neuroscience labs, Sabine Blankenship had no desire to run her own lab. Here she describes how her passion to study abroad led her from experiments that had become frustrating to outreach she finds invigorating. She now works in the German Consulate General in San Francisco, where she helps set up international research collaborations and keep the German government abreast of US advances, particularly in renewable energy and regenerative medicine.

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Tell me about your job

It’s part of the German foreign service. My job title is scientific liaison; we are installed in scientifically important cities like Washington DC and Boston. We’re the first point of call for setting agendas for visiting VIPs, maintaining networks, and fostering collaborations across industry and academia in the two countries.

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