What makes a good paper for nomination?

   The Aspirational Neuroscience mission is guided by our Memory Decoding Challenge -the aspiration to decode a non-trivial memory from a static map of synaptic connectivity. This is perhaps the ultimate test of whether we truly understand how long-term learning and memory work. It is anticipated that it will take many years for any research lab to meet the Memory Decoding Challenge. With this in mind, our annual Memory Research Awards are designed to honor papers that achieve key milestones toward that challenge. For example:

• Papers that demonstrate the decoding of simple functions (e.g. single neuron visual receptive fields, simple binary behaviors) from synaptic connectivity.
  • El-Boustani et al. 2018, Rossi et al. 2020, Scholl et al. 2020, Xiong et al. 2015
• Papers that reveal how memories are coded by tagging and manipulating memories at the cellular and synaptic levels.
  • Vetere et al. 2019, Hayashi-Takagi et al. 2015, Goto et al. 2021, Ryan et al. 2015, Choi et al. 2018, de Sousa et al. 2019
• Basic research papers exploring the structural and molecular changes underlying synaptic plasticity.
  • Holler et al. 2020, Noguchi et al. 2019, Iascone et al. 2020, Shibata et al. 2021
• Other high-quality papers that represent key milestones toward decoding memories. See our Current Nominations.