This Week in Science – The Kickass Science Podcast · Dr. Kirsten Sanford Science Media

TWISgiving Gratitude

·1 hr 10 min·5 clips

Researchers simulated an entire mouse cortex with 9 million neurons on a supercomputer, revealing new brain modeling capabilities.

Dr. Kiki opens by acknowledging it is a holiday week and that the episode will be shorter than usual. She leads with the mouse brain simulation story from the Allen Institute in collaboration with the Research Organization for Information Science and Technology in Japan, Yamaguchi University, and the Riken Center for Computational Science. The project ran on the Fugaku supercomputer at 145,728 nodes achieving 7.13 petaflops performance to simulate the entire mouse cerebral cortex with biophysical fidelity, meaning individual neurons modeled for their actual electrical and synaptic properties rather than simplified units. The team describes the work as proof that supercomputing is now ready to support mammalian brain simulation at full scale. Dr. Kiki and Blair speculate about what you would actually run on such a simulation: testing hypotheses about how neural circuits respond to sensory input, modeling seizure propagation, or understanding how the brain allocates attention. Blair presents the cockroach behavior story, noting that researchers have documented what appears to be deliberate huddling and physical contact behavior among cockroaches, raising questions about social bonding in insects not typically associated with affection. Blair ties the timing of the story, aired on a day many listeners will be gathering with families of variable emotional temperature, to a gentle joke about roach cuddles being preferable to certain relatives. Both hosts close with personal gratitude segments. Dr. Kiki expresses gratitude for science and for the audience who engages with curiosity rather than certainty. Blair gives thanks for dairy and food science, noting she spent eight hours cooking that day primarily with butter. The tone is warm, informal, and lightly humorous. The audience is science enthusiasts and regular This Week in Science listeners.

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