People with a PhD in the life sciences answer questions about their life and work.

To celebrate five years of eLife we catch up with some of our first authors and reflect on the current state of scientific publishing and peer review.

Multivariate stochastic volatility models provide insights into understanding the dynamics and connectivity of neural signals during cognitive tasks.

Peripheral injury induces a programmed but reversible transformation of gene expression in somatosensory neurons providing a mechanism to regulate sensory input during wound healing.

People compete by trying to outsmart their opponents as long as they win, but show random behavior, and neural signs of suppressing knowledge about opponents’ strategies, when they lose.

Neural oscillations prior to a stimulus modulate the strength of early and late responses in opposite directions via distinct mechanisms.

Regulatory evolution allows paralogs to escape from strucural pleiotropy.

Biologically plausible changes in the excitabilities of single neurons may suffice to selectively modulate sequential network dynamics, without modifying of recurrent connectivity.

Direct control of ligand binding half-life with light shows that lifetime strongly affects T cell signaling.

Nematode hermaphroditism has co-evolved with a self-sperm sensing mechanism that protects hermaphrodites from the detrimental effects of mating with males.