Featured Story:
Fruit Flies Can Be Guided to Interact With a Ball
March 19, 2026
Kenichi Iwasaki shares the highlights of two recent studies exploring the use of fruit flies in research probing the neural mechanisms of object interaction. This work includes the development of a behavioral study paradigm where fruit flies are guided to interact with a small plastic ball and found to manipulate it with great dexterity.
Community Stories
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 >
February 3, 2026
iPSC-derived sensory neurons provide an accessible platform for scientists to study sensory biology and disease; however, these cells are similar to embryonic neurons. Chelsey Derderian-LeBlang and Rosalind Segal present a protocol to accelerate the maturation of iPSC-derived sensory neurons, by providing external signals from satellite glial cells. They show that satellite glia, while previously described as a support cell, play a major role in both sensory neuron development and degeneration.
Original article in: Stem Cell Reports >
January 14, 2026
New experiences trigger rapid changes in gene activity and DNA accessibility in the brain’s memory-center, the hippocampus. Lisa Traunmüller and Erin Duffy describe new research from the Greenberg lab that uses advanced sequencing to map how different hippocampal regions respond at the molecular level to a novel environment — revealing how experiences shape brain circuits that underlie learning and memory.
Original article in: Nature Communications >
October 31, 2025
Rémy Furrer and Amanda Merner share the results of a survey of 1,052 U.S. adults, which found that neurotechnologies targeting motor symptoms were viewed as more acceptable and beneficial than those for mood or memory symptoms. Non-surgical options like transcranial magnetic stimulation were generally preferred over invasive ones such as deep brain stimulation.
Original article in: Device >
In the News
March 26, 2026
Results of a new clinical trial conducted by Kai W. Wucherpfennig and colleagues, co-first authors Maxim Meylan, Ye Tian, and Lijian Wu, finds that a single injection of an oncolytic virus — a virus that has been genetically modified to selectively infect and destroy cancer cells — can recruit immune cells to penetrate and persist deep within brain tumors.
Original article in: Cell >
March 26, 2026
New research from Robert C. Malenka, Neir Eshel (Stanford) and colleagues, co-first authors Daniel F. Cardozo Pinto (now at Harvard) and Michaela Y. Guo (Stanford) uncovers a neural circuit mechanism explaining how two key brain chemicals—dopamine and serotonin—work in opposition to regulate reward learning.
Original article in: Nature Communications >
March 2, 2026
Jeffrey Macklis and colleagues, co-first authors Abdulkadir Ozkan and Hari K. Padmanabhan discovered a way to grow the type of brain cells that degenerate in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and that are damaged in spinal cord injuries.
Original article in: eLife >
Awards & Honors
March 26, 2026
Round up of awards and honors earned by the HBI community.
March 5, 2026
Congratulations to David Ginty, the Edward R. and Anne G. Lefler Professor and Chair of Neurobiology at HMS, an HHMI investigator, and co-director of the Harvard Brain Science Initiative, on being awarded the 2026 Brain Prize! The Brain Prize is the world’s largest neuroscience research prize, awarded each year by the Lundbeck Foundation.