Featured Story:
A Shared Mechanism for Cognitive Restoration and Seizure Suppression in Neurodevelopmental Disorders
August 25, 2026
Amar Sahay shares his lab’s discovery that many ultra-high confidence risk genes for autism, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and epilepsy may be regulators of experience-dependent plasticity of inhibitory neurons in the hippocampus of adult mice. Proof-of-concept experiments reveal that targeting one of these regulators can improve cognition and suppress seizures in a common mouse model of neurodevelopmental disorder risk.
Community Stories
September 3, 2026
What if every cell in your brain had its own unique genome that permanently records its history, its sibling cells, its age, the effects of disease, and its struggle for survival? How would that change the way we think about aging and degeneration in the brain? Christopher Walsh discusses these questions in light of two new studies from his lab and collaborating groups.
September 2, 2026
Host-microbe interactions are essential for neurological function. Valentina Lagomarsino shares new research from the Rao Lab showing how microbes play a vital role in regulating the neuroendocrine axis and activity of motor circuits in the colon.
Original article in: Nature Neuroscience >
August 10, 2026
Nuria Domínguez-Iturza and Paola Arlotta present new research describing the molecular signals that promote myelination in the cerebral cortex and show that these signals are expressed at varying levels across neuronal types. Their findings reveal how neuronal diversity shapes myelin development, providing new insights into brain development and disease.
Original article in: Developmental Cell >
February 24, 2026
How do we prepare early-career scientists for today’s wide range of paths in and beyond the lab? Jelena Patrnogić shares a new flexible competency framework she developed with Xiuqi Li and David Van Vactor that makes expectations clearer for trainees, mentors, and programs, and supports growth across both research and professional skills.
Original article in: PLoS Biology >
In the News
September 15, 2026
The new grant establishes the Human Developmental Neurobiology Hub, to be co-led by Paola Arlotta (Harvard) and Nenad Sestan (Yale). The team — which includes Marinka Zitnik (Harvard Medical School) — will focus on understanding and mapping how the human brain develops at the neural, cellular, genetic, and molecular levels to understand the divergences that occur in children with autism.
September 15, 2026
In a new milestone for stem cell research, new research from Paola Arlotta and colleagues, co-first authors Irene Faravelli and Noelia Antón-Bolañosa, sets the record for keeping alive lab-grown human brain “organoids” and proven that they mimic key developmental stages seen in living people.
Original article in: Nature >
September 15, 2026
A new paper from Erin Hecht, Sophie Barton, and first author Mélina Cordeau recently published in the Journal of Neuroscience, analyzed how human influence, through both selective breeding across evolutionary time and training during individual lifetimes, has shaped the canine brain to make dogs better communicators.
Original article in: Journal of Neuroscience >
Awards & Honors
September 15, 2026
Round up of awards and honors earned by the HBI community.
August 5, 2026
Round up of awards and honors earned by the HBI community.