Most known for its role in movement, the cerebellum could compensate for flagging mental functions elsewhere in the brain.
Category: neuroscience
An AAV variant selected through NHP screens robustly transduces the brain and drives secreted protein expression in NHPs and mice
Tecedor et al. used directed evolution to engineer AAVs with enhanced ependymal and brain delivery after injection into the cerebrospinal fluid. I think it would be interesting to try lumbar puncture delivery of these AAVs as well to see if they maintain decent biodistribution. (See my other post about Hinderer et al.’s paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.omtm.2020.04.012).
AAV capsid variants enriched for transduction of ventricular lining cells and brain parenchyma reduce the dose required for gene therapy to the CNS.
Living life through a brain-computer interface
This post was written by BrainGate2 clinical trial participant Casey Harrell (who gave us permission to use his name) and researcher Nicholas Card. Casey wrote his portions using the brain-computer interface described in the paper.
A common vitamin could help fight one of the deadliest brain cancers
A clinical trial is exploring whether high doses of vitamin B3 could give patients with glioblastoma a better chance against the aggressive brain cancer. Scientists found that niacin may help revive immune cells that tumors shut down, allowing them to attack cancer more effectively. Early results have been promising, with patients showing significantly better progression-free survival than expected.
Electron-Ion Collider’s radiofrequency controls system passes first real-world test
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory has reached a key early milestone in developing radiofrequency control systems for the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC)—a next-generation research facility that will collide electrons with ions to reveal how the building blocks of matter are held together.
At the heart of any particle accelerator are radiofrequency (RF) systems, which use electromagnetic waves to accelerate particle beams to near-light speed and keep them tightly controlled. The system tested here—known as low-level radiofrequency (LLRF)—acts as the “brain,” precisely controlling those RF fields to ensure stable and accurate operation.
This milestone marks the first successful test of the newly built EIC common platform-based LLRF electronics on a real accelerator cavity. The common platform is a shared hardware and control system for accelerator operations, allowing teams to use the same technology rather than create separate electronics for each system.
Your heartbeat quietly shapes how your brain processes information
Your brain is not processing the world in isolation.
A new Science article highlights a growing idea in neuroscience: the heartbeat may subtly shape how the brain processes information. Every heartbeat sends signals through the body and brain, creating heartbeat-linked neural activity that can influence perception, attention, and even self-related processing.
This does not mean the heart “controls” thought. The point is more subtle: internal body rhythms may change the brain’s moment-to-moment state, making certain signals easier or harder to detect depending on timing.
That matters for neuroscience research. Many experiments treat heartbeat, breathing, and other physiological rhythms as noise or artifacts. But if these rhythms affect neural excitability and perception, they may be hidden variables that help explain trial-to-trial variability in EEG, MEG, fMRI, and behavioral studies.
The bigger takeaway: cognition is embodied. The brain is constantly integrating external information from the world with internal information from the body. Understanding perception, attention, emotion, and consciousness may require studying the brain and body as one coupled system—not as separate machines.
In neuroscience, the “background” physiology may be part of the signal.
The Neuroscience of Intelligence | MIT 2026
What neuroscience reveals about how intelligence actually works — and how those insights are informing the next generation of AI architectures.
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Pan-cancer neurotransmitter receptor alterations define neuroregulatory subtypes with prognostic significance
Luo et al. characterize a comprehensive molecular portrait of neurotransmitter receptor genes across 33 cancer types using multidimensional omics data from The Cancer Genome Atlas and other independent cohorts. They identify clinically relevant neuroregulatory subtypes with distinct molecular features, advancing the emerging field of cancer neuroscience.