Interview with Nikos Papanikolaou, principal investigator of the Computational Clinical Imaging Group.

Keynote Lecture: Cancer Cell Therapy Comes of Age

Date: 22 June, 2023

Schedule: 4pm - 5.30pm

Venue: Seminar Room (2nd floor, main building, no registration needed)

The exploration of alternative therapeutics for hard-to-treat mental health disorders has brought into focus an array of psychedelics such as psilocybin, present in ‘magic mushrooms’, and LSD, substances once associated more with counterculture than clinical practice. Alongside ‘atypical’ psychedelics like ketamine and MDMA, these substances are increasingly being recognised for their potential therapeutic attributes.

The Constant Chatter of Neurons

“The brain isn’t like a computer that turns off when it’s not doing a particular task”, explains Alfonso Renart, the senior author of the study published in eLife. “There’s always a kind of background hum, a baseline activity that can sometimes make it seem as if the brain is chattering to itself”. The team’s study lifts the lid on how that baseline activity, the continuous stream of electrical impulses sent by neurons, impacts behaviour and decision-making.

Many animals rely on smell to identify and locate objects in their surroundings and to respond appropriately. To investigate this phenomenon further, Greg Jefferis’ group in the LMB’s Neurobiology Division established a collaboration with the Behavior and Metabolism Lab, lead by Carlos Ribeiro, at the Champalimaud Foundation (CF) and the group of  Drosophila Connectomics at Cambridge University and together studied Drosophila flies.