Researchers discover neurones that predict the timing of spontaneous decisions.

You’re waiting at a bus stop, expecting the bus to arrive any time. You watch the road. Nothing yet. A little later you start to pace. More time passes. Maybe there is some problem, you think. Finally, you give up and raise your arm and hail a taxi. Just as you pull away, you glimpse the bus gliding up. Did you have a choice to wait a bit longer? Or was giving up too soon the inevitable and predictable result of a chain of neural events?

CNP workshop explores what can two or many brains do that one cannot.

Máxima Magazine recruited CNP principal investigators to take a step for equality while wearing high heels.

Dia da Deliberação | Deliberation Day was a collaborative event between CNP researchers, members of the science outreach initiative, Ar | Respire connosco, and the Portuguese Government.

The event was held at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown auditorium, in Lisbon during the afternoon of October 25th, as part of the 40th anniversary celebrations of the Carnation Revolution.

A new study published this week in Nature Neuroscience, by INDP student David Raposo, reveals that behavioral multitasking is reflected in the activity of a specific area in the brain.

Classically, it is thought that single neurons encode single functions. This is particularly true in primary sensory areas where sensory inputs, such as tone or colour, are represented by specific categories of neurons. But what happens with higher brain functions, like decision-making, which require integration of different types of information?

Last Friday, CNP welcomed 65 participants from 11 different countries to the Workshop Improving Zebrafish Husbandry towards better research and animal welfare.

This workshop was organised by the Fish Platform and aimed at promoting the scientific and technical discussion on the development of advanced husbandry procedures and concepts in zebrafish, an emergent and exponentially-growing animal model in biomedical research. The audience was mainly comprised by researchers, facility managers and technicians.

Catarina Ramos, CNP Science Communication coordinator, talks about her path and her role at CNP.

What kind of research happens at the CNP? How much do you need to know about it in order to communicate it to public? What initiatives does the CNP Science Communication coordinate and how does one become a science communicator in the first place?

CNP Graduate students speak about what it means to be a neuroscientist in an event for high-school students held at Centro Ciência Viva in Sintra.

Megan Carey, principal investigator at the Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme, receives a Starting Grant of 1.5 million euros, from the European Research Council (ERC), to study the neural circuits that coordinate locomotion in mice, over the next 5 years.

A new study shows that increasing sugar in the diet of male fruit flies for just 1 or 2 days before mating can cause obesity in their offspring through alterations that affect gene expression in the embryo.

There is also evidence that a similar system regulates obesity susceptibility in mice and humans. The research, which is published online December 4 in the Cell Press journal Cell, provides insights into how certain metabolic traits are inherited and may help investigators determine whether they can be altered.