In his 12 years on the editorial board of JNeurosci, David Perkel — a senior editor for the journal and a professor at the University of Washington — has acquired numerous insights into science publishing. Here he answers commonly asked questions about the publishing process and shares advice applicable to neuroscientists at any career stage, whether you’re preparing to publish your first paper or looking to keep up with best practices.

There are five major components of an NIH training grant, which are almost equally weighted in the review process — that includes the sponsor statement. It’s important to know that the sponsor statement has to be as strong as the rest of the application. Even an outstanding training grant applicant can get hung up because of a moderate concern with this section. Write an effective sponsor statement by addressing the following areas. 1. Follow Instructions It’s never a good idea to make reviewers work to find information they need to complete their critiques. Fortunately, online instructions from NIH for this section clearly state the information and format you must provide.

Behavioral and neuroscientific studies have shown that watching a speaker's lip movements aids speech comprehension. Intriguingly, even when videos of speakers are presented silently, various cortical regions track auditory features, such as the envelope. Recently, we demonstrated that eye movements track low-level acoustic information when attentively listening to speech. In this study we investigated whether ocular speech tracking occurs during visual speech and how it influences cortical silent speech tracking. Furthermore, we compared the data of hearing individuals with congenitally deaf individuals, and those with acquired deafness or hearing loss (DHH; Deaf or hard of hearing) to assess how audiovisual listening experience and auditory deprivation (early vs. late onset) affects neural and ocular speech tracking during silent lip-reading. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we examined ocular and neural speech tracking of 75 participants observing silent videos of a speaker played forward and backwar...

Chronic pain affects millions globally, yet no universally effective treatment exists. The primary motor cortex (M1) has been a key target for chronic pain therapies, with electrical stimulation of the M1 (eMCS) showing promise. However, the mechanisms underlying M1-mediated analgesic effects are not fully understood. We investigated the role of the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) in M1-mediated analgesia using a neuropathic pain mouse model. In this model, neuropathic pain is associated with increased spontaneous activity of layer V pyramidal neurons (LV-PNs) in the S1, partly attributed to the reduced activity of somatostatin-expressing inhibitory neurons (SST+ INs), which normally suppress LV-PNs. While manipulation of either LV-PNs or SST+ INs has been shown to alleviate pain, the role of S1 in M1-mediated analgesia has not been identified. Using multichannel silicon probes, we applied eMCS to neuropathic mice and observed significant analgesia. Histological analyses revealed that eMCS activated SST+...

Brain bees are grassroots, Q&A competitions for secondary school students to encourage them to learn more about the brain and pursue careers in biomedical research. Leading a brain bee is an impactful way for neuroscientists to get involved in outreach and work with schools and students to expand their interest in neuroscience. The International Brain Bee organization oversees all national brain bees. Each national brain bee then oversees the local bees in their area. Anyone is eligible to sponsor a competition. Register your competition so your winner is eligible for national and international brain bees. After registering, follow these recommended steps to ensure your bee is successful. Remember, each local bee can have a unique setup and methods, so these are merely suggestions. Work with your national coordinator to determine if there are any specific requirements for bees in your area.

Advocacy comprises more than in-person conversations with lawmakers. It requires connecting with a variety of audiences and tailoring your messages to what they care about most. In this recording of the Public Advocacy Forum at Neuroscience 2018, advocates from across the field share how they build their present advocacy activities on past ones, find ways to advocate throughout the day, and communicate how their research improves lives. You’ll learn how different audiences think about science, as well as how to tap into preexisting support for research among nonscientists and use key advocacy tools to demonstrate the impact of science funding over time — the story scientists are best suited to tell.

“Our ultimate goal is to understand how the brain controls behavior," says Anne Churchland, an associate professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. “We want to measure neural activity from as many neurons as possible,” she says, and “know as much about those neurons as we can.” In this Meet-the-Expert, she reflects on her career path, beginning as an undergrad through where she is today. She also shares some of the approaches and techniques her lab uses to illuminate the neural circuits underlying decision-making, such as two-photon and widefield imaging, and modeling to interpret neural data and make discoveries. Her lab examines behavior in humans and rodents and measures neural activity in rodents. She also explains how the work of her lab is made more powerful through the International Brain Laboratory, a team she helped launch comprising 21 experimental and theoretical neuroscientists working in London, New York, and Lisbon.

Material below summarizes the article, Refractoriness Accounts for Variable Spike Burst Responses in Somatosensory Cortex, published on August 14, 2017, in eNeuro and authored by Bartosz Teleńczuk, Richard Kempter, Gabriel Curio, and Alain Destexhe. In the cortical area responsible for the processing of touch, the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) neurons can respond to touch stimuli with a very high precision. This is measured by repeating the same stimulus many times and recording neurons in S1 using a micro-electrode. This was shown in macaque monkeys. Electrically stimulating the median nerve (which relays the touch information from the hand) at the wrist leads to the firing of high-frequency bursts of action potentials in the primary somatosensory cortex. Remarkably, this pattern of firing is repeatable with sub-millisecond precision.

During Fall 2011, I moved from Puerto Rico, where I was born and raised, to New York City, for grad school. It was the first time I lived so far from my family and the world I knew. My undergraduate experience at the University of Puerto Rico was relatively homogenous. However, that quickly changed when I started graduate school, as I was often the only underrepresented minority in the room. All of these changes hit at once, and I struggled to manage the stress of graduate school and the feeling of being an imposter. As I look back on that time, here’s what helped me connect with my peers and find success academically. 1. Focus on what unites you with your peers, not what separates you.

As science becomes more global and collaborative, understanding power dynamics and how they shape professional interactions is key for promoting healthy and productive learning spaces and workplaces. In this Short Course from Neuroscience 2018, panelists give short lectures and lead case study discussions on power dynamics in science and academia. You’ll come away with a better understanding of the nature of power dynamics and how intersectionality affects the way relative differences in power are experienced by different people. You’ll also learn how to develop skills to manage power dynamics at work and in the classroom. This Short Course was organized by Story Landis, Elisabeth Van Bockstaele, Marguerite Matthews, Keith Trujillo, and Cheryl Sisk.