In this audio interview, Gonçalo explains how this grant will fund ongoing work on Lesional Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) that is being developed in collaboration with several members of the Neuropsychiatry Unit. The proposal is to use the results from this work to test a new treatment for OCD through transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which will include the Neuropsychiatry Unit’s first clinical trial using therapeutic TMS.
 

Listen to the full audio recording to find out more!

Through the provision of these two-year collaborative research grants, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) programme aims to accelerate cutting-edge research and technology in metabolism and metabolic physiology. The objective of these grants is to map, measure, and integrate metabolism across different scales—from molecules and organelles to cells and tissues—deepening our understanding of human biology, and to investigate the metabolic processes that maintain physiological homeostasis.

Understanding Treatment-Resistant Depression

Treatment-resistant depression (TRD) is a particularly challenging form of major depressive disorder. As Albino Oliveira-Maia, head of the Champalimaud Foundation’s Neuropsychiatry Unit and the study’s national coordinator for Portugal, explains, “TRD is defined as the persistence of depressive symptoms despite adequate courses of at least two different antidepressant medications”. Despite repeated therapeutic attempts, these patients’ depressive symptoms remain.

On October 1st, people in over 150 countries across the globe will celebrate the power of music to unite and contribute towards a more peaceful, joyful, and harmonious society during International Music Day. Here at the Champalimaud Foundation, we have several budding musicians, so we asked one of them to give us some insight into combining music with science.

Why we have a brain

“The brain’s primary function is movement”, explains Claudia Feierstein, lead author of the study published today in Current Biology. “Plants don’t need a brain because they don’t move. Yet, even for something as seemingly simple as eye movements, the brain’s role remains largely enigmatic. Our goal is to illuminate this ‘black box’ of motion and to decode how neural activity controls eye and body movements, using zebrafish as our model organism”.

The distinguished recipients from Portugal are Giulia Ghedini and Ilana Gabanyi from the Gulbenkian Science Institute (IGC) and Carlos Minutti of the Champalimaud Foundation. The principal investigators will be granted between €1.5-1.9M each to develop their research proposals over the next five years.

Why Adult Plasticity Matters

Much like young children who swiftly acquire languages in their early years, our visual system also has a “critical period” during the first few years of life where rapid development occurs. After this time, changes become more difficult, following the old adage, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. Indeed, many treatments aimed at restoring vision, such as those addressing congenital cataracts or “lazy eye”, are only effective before the age of 7.

From Aristotle’s musings on the nature of time to Einstein’s theory of relativity, humanity has long pondered: how do we perceive and understand time? The theory of relativity posits that time can stretch and contract, a phenomenon known as time dilation. Just as the cosmos warps time, our neural circuits can stretch and compress our subjective experience of time. As Einstein famously quipped, “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute”.

The 2023 retreat took place at the Grande Hotel do Luso, in the beautiful Serra do Buçaco, from 29 May to 1 June, with the participation of more than 250 CR members. The theme of this year’s retreat was Embracing Multitudes: a Game of Translation which aimed at building bridges between the diverse research areas of CR, from neuroscience, cancer biology and immunology, to translational clinical research. The focus was on the diversity that shapes our institute and how to create a cohesive and collaborative community.

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