In a new study, researchers asked whether an artificial agent could improve behavior in an animal, by learning to control a living nervous system. Using optogenetics to allow the RL agent to control C. elegans worm neurons, they were able to help the worms find food better. The team also gained clues as to how different parts of the C. elegans nervous system were involved in generating directed movement.

Pint-Sized Science, a podcast of Science in the News, features HBI co-director Venkatesh Murthy. In an interview with graduate students Ana-Andreea Stoica (Columbia Univ) and Anastasia Repouliou (Harvard Univ), Murthy discusses our sense of smell—why it matters, how it works, and what are some of the big questions in olfaction research today.

HMS News article on new research from the labs of Wei-Chung Allen Lee and colleagues, co-first authors Jasper Phelps, David Grant Colburn Hildebrand, and Brett J. Graham, on the development of GridTape, an automated electron microscopy system enabling comprehensive, high-resolution imaging of large neural circuits.

Davide Valeriani shares new research from the Dystonia and Speech Motor Control Laboratory on the development of DystoniaNet, a 3D convolutional neural network capable of diagnosing dystonia from raw structural MRI data.

Round up of awards and honors earned by the HBI community.

Artificial neural networks could be used to provide insight into biological systems.