#CRSy23 #BrainBodyWorld23 aims to foster the discussion of how internal states, such as hunger, thirst, and emotion, are generated and regulated by the brain, and how they interact with the body and the external world to drive behaviour. 

Maria (fictional name) has a scheduled surgical intervention to remove a malignant tumour from one of her breasts. She is the pre-op room, waiting to go into the OR, where the surgery will be performed under general anaesthetics. No wonder she feels anxious, her heart beats very fast, and she is unable to think about anything else right now. Her blood pressure is also going up.

The second edition of the European Researchers’ Night (ERN), organised by the RAISE - Researchers in Action for Inclusion in Science and Education consortium will be held on the 29th of September 2023 and will, once again, take place at the Champalimaud Foundation (Lisbon).

The main goal of this public event, organised by consortium partners, Native Scientists, Champalimaud Foundation and Instituto de Medicina Molecular, is to promote, actively and effectively, diversity and inclusion in science and education.

A study published today, April 13th, in the journal Nature Neuroscience provides a surprising answer to this question by showing that, rather than committing to a single strategy, the brain can compute multiple alternative decision strategies simultaneously.

The study, led by Fanny Cazettes and senior authors Zachary Mainen and Alfonso Renart, at the Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon, Portugal, performed a specially-designed experiment which used a kind of “virtual reality” setup for mice, in which the animals were tasked with searching for water in a virtual world.