Neuroverse

In today's episode Carolina and Clara discuss antibiotic resistance, the danger it poses, how it happens and the new therapies being researched to overcome antibiotic resistance! Today’s episode was made possible thanks to the support of the Biochemical Society public engagement fund. We would like to thank the Biochemical Society for the generous grant supporting Science Communication initiat...

To celebrate 3 years since our first Neuroverse episode aired, we are talking about one of the most fascinating and mysterious topics- Love! Join us as we delve into the roots of human love, discuss why love evolved, what its purpose is, and how the development of both our brains and our social systems are intricately connected to the way we love. Happy Valentine's week <3 --- We hope you e...

In today's episode, Carolina & Clara dive into the philosophy of smell/olfaction. The olfactory system and smell experience is unique to other sensory systems in many ways, including being primarily chemical, much more intimate and absorptive, and arguably the least conscious. Can we reduce smells to chemical odours? How does language limit our perception of smell? What is the core functio...

Enjoy our last episode of 2024! Carolina and Clara chat and reminisce about their favourite episodes from the past year, the most enlightening and exciting moments on the podcast, and their hopes for 2025. --- We hope you enjoy the episode! Please feel free to share with your friends and family, it means a lot to us🤍 Neuroverse Website ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://neuroversepod.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ P...

In this exciting event that took place at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre on October 22nd 2024, Carolina and Clara were joined by invited panelists- Jai Bhagat, Aaditya Singh, Clémentine Dominé, and Pierre Glaser- to discuss the fascinating question of whether computational models and machine learning will ever be able to replicate the full complexity of the brain. Together with the audience, the di...

Today's episode is the second part of our two-part conversation with Ashlan Reid and Mari Sosa, two neuroscience postdoctoral fellows, who share their experiences finding and fostering community within academia. In this episode, they share their experiences being part of an international community of life science early career researchers, through an organisation called Leading Edge. The Leading Ed...

In this episode, Carolina and Clara are joined by two postdoctoral fellows to discuss their research journeys, from undergraduate to postdoctoral experiences. They discuss the challenges they have faced, and share advice on how to stay motivated and inquisitive in academia in the face of technical or personal hurdles. Ashlan Reid is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Tony Zador's lab at Cold Sprin...

Carolina and Clara discuss with Saron RNA, how to study it, visualise it and how it is the ultimate mediator of life. Saron Tekie carried out her a Bsc in biomedical sciences at the University of Birmingham followed by a Msc in Cancer and Molecular Biology. Saron is now carrying out a PhD in evolutionary genetics in UCL in Gemma Murry lab. Saron also did a project with Konstantin Reder on collagen...

In today's episode, we are joined by Sophie Scott, a professor in cognitive neuroscience and head of the speech communications group at University College London. Her research focuses on the neural basis of vocal communication- how our brains process information in speech and control the production of our voice- as well as the expression of emotion in the voice, especially laughter. In the episode...

Join Carolina and Clara in today’s episode where we discuss economic decision-making in mice with Dr Ann Duan, a group leader in the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre. The goal of Ann’s lab is to understand how animals make flexible decisions under risk, social influence, and the neural circuit mechanisms underlying these choices. Today’s episode was made possible thanks to the support of the Sainsbury We...

In this week's episode we are joined by Isabelle Zane, a PhD student at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge who is investigating the link between genetic mutations and protein function in the Lehner & Parts labs. We discuss a novel technology- deep mutational scanning- which is used to screen how single gene mutations influence the structure and/or function of proteins, thereby testing...

Join Carolina and Clara in today's episode on transcriptomics to translation with Inga Van den Bossche. Inga carried out her undergrad and masters degree in materials science and engineering at Imperial college London and is now a doctoral student since 2022 in Professor Molly Stevens lab at Oxford, researching cellular interfaces and innovative biomaterials for regenerative medicine. We focus on...

Welcome to our special summer rerelease series! Carolina and Clara take a trip down memory lane with a special series dedicated to their older episodes, including ones you may have missed! In today’s episode Carolina and Clara discuss biomimetic and bioinspired materials, and the challenges of understanding the biological structure of natural materials to then create additional intelligent biologi...

In today's episode we are joined by Ryen O’Meara, a Chemical Engineer graduate student in Caltech. Ryen joined Nobel Laureate Francis Arnold's lab with the aim to engineer enzymes that degrade emerging environmental contaminants, and merge sustainability and protein engineering. We discuss with Ryen the environmentally concerning Silicon-Carbon bonds in everyday products (such as lubricant...

Welcome to our special summer rerelease series! Carolina and Clara take a trip down memory lane with a special series dedicated to their older episodes, including ones you may have missed! In this episode, we discussed the fascinating world of fungi, and in particular, mycelium or mycorrhizal networks- a form of fungi that have an incredible capacity to connect plants and transport nutrients and s...

In today's episode, we are joined by Dr. Sam Cooke, a group leader and senior lecturer at King's College London who researches the mechanisms that underlie learning and memory in the brain. We discuss his research journey that led him to become fascinated in the processes of learning and memory, as well as the tools he uses to record neural activity- in vivo electrophysiology- and what those squig...

Welcome to our special summer rerelease series! Carolina and Clara take a trip down memory lane with a special series dedicated to their older episodes, including ones you may have missed! Today we are reviving the oxygen debate - is oxygen a friend or foe? Was it truly evolutionarily advantageous for us to learn to respire using oxygen or should another element have been responsible for that task...

In today's episode Carolina and Clara discuss the latest research on brain computer interfaces (BCI), and how they aid patients with motor related deficits such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), paralysis, and locked-in syndrome. Different types of BCI vary in how invasive they are and the different sorts of motor functions they can aid, from communicating, writing, moving and more. How much...

This week we are joined by Elodie Freymann, an evolutionary anthropologist, primatologist, artist and storyteller to discuss the evolution of self-medication. Elodie recently completed a PhD in evolutionary anthropology at the University of Oxford, and shares with us her work studying self-medication in chimpanzees of the Budongo Forest in Uganda. She tells us about what it is like to work in the...

In today's episode Carolina and Clara are joined by Dr Rachel Jackson to discuss different techniques to interrogate synaptic function. Neurotransmitter release is a crucial function of the neuron that enables the transfer of information in the brain. When this gets disrupted pathologies can arise, such as in neurodegenerative disorders. We discuss Rachel's research investigating the prote...

In today's episode Carolina & Clara discuss the dynamics of strategy-learning of deep neural networks with Aaditya Singh. Aditya is carrying out a PhD on “Learning dynamics of various strategies and circuits in deep neural networks” in Prof. Andrew Saxe’s and Dr Felix Hill at UCL in the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit. Aaditya completed his bachelor’s and Masters at MIT on Computer...

In today's episode, Carolina & Clara discuss the neuroscience and psychology behind interoception, the process that guides our sense of self and is often termed our "sixth sense". How does our perception of our internal bodily states drive our emotions and cognitive state? We discuss the place for interoception in our sense of being. We also discuss what happens when we lack inte...

For our third episode in our "Tools for Looking into the Brain" series, we are joined by Dr. Adil Khan, a neuroscientist and group leader at King's College London, to explore reading and writing patterns into the brain. We discuss the principles of two major tools used to examine and manipulate neural activity, namely two-photon microscopy and optogenetics, and explore how they have been applied t...

In today's episode, we are joined by Professor Tiago Branco, a Principal Investigator and Group Leader at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at UCL. The Branco lab studies how instinctive decisions are computed from sensory information, and from representations of the world built from experience. In this episode, we discuss what different sorts of approaches (top-down vs bottom-up) you can employ to st...

Today's episode is about fungi & lichen! We are joined by George Mears, a PhD student at Royal Holloway and Kew Gardens. Having carried out research on the evolutionary impact of the lichen lifestyle on the fungal genome during his Masters, George is currently in the LIDo iCASE PhD program, working under Professor Robin Williams to continue biological research into plant-derived products....