Appearances can be deceiving. When looking at the outmost layer of the brain, called the neocortex, it looks like a simple sheet of neurons. But the truth is far from it. This “simple sheet” has a complex sub organization of its own. And not only that, the neocortex is the brain structure that endows us with advanced cognitive abilities, such as thought and language.

Faced with imminent danger, parents will unconditionally defend their young instead of ensuring their own safety. Scientists have now discovered that it is the release of the so-called “love hormone” – oxytocine – into the amygdala, a brain structure known for its crucial role in the processing of emotional reactions, that accounts for a mother’s behavior when it comes to protecting her offspring.

Scientific progress and Open Science go hand in hand. Open Science includes the sharing of data, techniques and ideas, which drives scientific progress by enabling scientists to build on each other’s work to make further discoveries. Ultimately, these discoveries produce major benefits for society in all fields including medicine and health.

To promote Open Science practice in EU, the European Commission has been taking a series of steps, which include the organisation of the international workshop held at the CCU earlier this week.

On Tuesday June 27, 2017, the Portuguese neuroscientist Rui Costa, principal investigator at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, in Lisbon, Portugal, and Professor of Neuroscience at Columbia University, in New York, was awarded the Ariëns Kappers Medal at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NIN), in Amsterdam.

Who are today’s scientists? Inspired by the project “Humans of New York”, Ar Magazine turns the spotlight on individual humans of science every month.

Chemotherapy is an important, life-saving treatment for breast cancer. But it’s not risk free. While some of its side effects are short-term and reversible, others are not and could even result in severe repercussions to the patient’s health. It is therefore of paramount importance that doctors would be able to assess whether the benefits of administering chemotherapy outweigh the risks on a case by case basis.

It is a part of every waking moment of our lives. But whenever scientists have tried to study it, consciousness has slipped through their fingers. Will we ever understand why we have it and how it arises in our brains?

“There seems to be a big gap between the physical universe, that has these objective properties, and one’s own feelings, sensations – this inner world that no one else has any access to. These two things seem to have nothing to do with one another.” – Zach Mainen

Who are today’s scientists? Inspired by the project “Humans of New York”, Ar Magazine turns the spotlight on individual humans of science every month.

Name: Roberto Keller
Affiliation: National Museum of Natural History and Science, Lisbon

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Photo credit: Marina Fridman

Twenty to 30 percent of patients with depression are estimated to be unresponsive or intolerant to antidepressive drugs. But when these patients are submitted to a few weeks’ sessions of a non-invasive technique called “repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation”, or rTMS, the clinical state of 41,5 to 56,4 percent of them substantially improves and between 26,5 e 28,7 percent are no longer depressed (the numbers vary according to the assessment scale being used).

Portuguese scientists have for the first time shown that the larvae of a tiny fish could one day become the preferred model for predicting, in advance, the response of human malignant tumors to the various therapeutic drugs used to fight cancer.

I was always “very frustrated about the fact although we have so much technology, we can put people on the moon etc., if someone has a tumor we still don’t know which drug is best for that specific tumor. – Rita Fior