If you had to fit two meters of a thread into a ball smaller than the width of a single strand of hair, how would you do it? How would you organize it so that important parts of the thread are close together? This is precisely the way our DNA fits inside our cell nucleus, and the way we do it has direct implications on whether genes are activated at the right time and place.

Confidence and uncertainty in our thoughts are extremely important when making decisions, but how does the brain compute confidence? We found a region in the brain closely associated with confidence. This sheds light on how the brain evaluates our own thoughts and actions.

In type 1 diabetes the immune system attacks cells in the pancreas, causing chronic problems with blood sugar. It has long been a mystery why the immune system does these attacks. We discovered that nerve cells may play an important role, and this could be an important step in finding a treatment.

Eating when hungry, drinking when thirsty and fear under threat are essential behaviors for animal survival produced by the long evolution of life. We found that the brain processes these simple survival behaviors in a surprisingly complex way. The brain encodes different survival behaviors using combinations of brain cell types, like the instruments in an orchestra playing different symphonies.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, many drugs have been tested to improve patient outcomes or reduce transmission. One of these drugs has generated hopes and tensions around the globe: hydroxychloroquine. We studied its effect against the virus responsible for the coronavirus pandemic under robust experimental conditions, on the most appropriate animal model we have: macaques.

Suffering from abdominal pain after eating, a common feature of patients with irritable bowel syndrome, is common yet difficult to treat. We found that an infection in the gut can cause the body to develop an immune response to specific foods. This means that you can develop an intolerance to certain foods causing abdominal pain after meals.