The sound of cells in the brain just doesn’t get old! It’s how I fell in love with #neuroscience 🧠🧪👩🏻‍🔬

Celebrating small victories - first #neuropixels recordings in the lab. Congrats to the team that made it happen!

#PostdocJob from the #RuedigerLab at #UCL, London:

"I’m excited to share that we have an opening for a postdoctoral position in my lab at University College London. This role is funded by the Wellcome Trust and offers a unique chance to join our team as we work to understand how cortical and subcortical visual circuits work together to turn visual signals into learned actions in mice.
In this role, you will:
• Design and perform innovative experiments in head-fixed and freely moving mice
• Use advanced techniques like #Neuropixels recordings and two-photon calcium imaging to monitor and analyze brain activity
• Collaborate closely with a diverse team of experimentalists and computational neuroscientists
• Contribute to the preparation and dissemination of our research findings through publications and conference presentations

This is a fantastic opportunity to make original contributions to our growing research group. If you have a strong background in in vivo physiology, mouse behavioral studies, and relevant data analysis - and you’re eager to expand your skills while playing a key role in our projects - I’d love to hear from you.

For further details, including the full job description, please check out:
Job Ad

I look forward to the possibility of you joining our team.
Sarah"

#NeuroMice #Neuroscience #InVivoEphys

#NeuroESC #JournalClub
Reading Mental exploration of future choices during immobility theta oscillations

If you've read it, will you let me know what you think?

The authors look at #ThetaSequences in a working memory task in a radial arm maze. They find theta during immobility (makes sense, e.g. we saw that in our two-goals task). They also find that theta sequences might preferentially represent the next goal (also makes sense, e.g. Hippocampal theta sequences reflect current goals)!

I have only done a quick reading so far, but am confused by a few points:

• the decoding is done on all cells (pyramidals and interneurons), shouldn't it be done on pyramidal or #PlaceCells only?
• the cell counts are quite low (often less than 40 pyrs) when I would have thought at least 50 place cells would be needed for this kind of maze. I guess that shows that #Neuropixels are not the best to record from dCA1!

• the decoded algorithm itself includes a ' position transition matrix' which seems like it would bias decoding towards realistic trajectories that the rat is about to do??? (but I probably missed something)

• also, this study is very related to this other paper, which is not discussed or even cited (😕 ):
  Assembly Responses of Hippocampal CA1 Place Cells Predict Learned Behavior in Goal-Directed Spatial Tasks on the Radial Eight-Arm Maze #CsisvariLab

Let me know what you think!

#LeutgebLab #NeuroRat #Neuroscience #SpatialCognition

Every time I heard that the vertebrate retina does not receive any feedback from the central brain I expressed scepticism, and was told repeatedly that no, feedback fibers running backwards along the optic nerve were never found.

Now*, Sylvia Schröder et al. reports that:

"Arousal modulates retinal output", Schröder et al. 2020 https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(20)30318-4

Recordings with neuropixels probes on the optic tract of the mouse showed changes in retinal ganglion cell (RGC) activity (the output neurons of the retina whose axons make up the optical tract) in concordance with the arousal state of the mouse. They also measured activity of RGC axon boutons in the superior colliculus.

What a fantastic piece of work.

* for long values of "now".

#neuroscience #neuropixels #vision #retina #mouse

UnitMatch uses only the neurons’ spike waveform to track them across many days. This works really well with high-density probes such as #Neuropixels, where the spikes are visible across many recording sites.

What do #Electrophysiologists who record raw data from many channels (#NeuroPixels, #Hyperdrives…) do for data backup and storage? I just bought 2 x 4Tb external drives and it looks like they won’t be enough (at all). Is there a cheap and reliable AND huge storage way to do this?

#Ephys #NeuroMethods #DataManagement

We're having a bit of a problem with assembling our #neuropixels assembly rig (specifically with the docking holder for the Apollo implant for NP1):
When we try to heat-insert the
brass threads, the walls of the holder holes keep cracking and breaking.
We use a 350C soldering iron, but we have one with a pretty small tip.
Are our brass inserts still too cold? Are we inserting too fast? Any ideas what we might be doing wrong?

Hi Everyone.

At the beginning of the year I received notice I've got my first funding as a new PI. It's for an ambitious project to look at how the main olfactory system in mice enables individualized social interactions. I wanted to hire a postdoc before, but now I really really want to hire a postdoc. If you know anyone who is at the right stage and might think the picture attached to this post looks cool, please can you share? There's a lot more to it than what's in the diagrams here.

The job ad is in several places including here:
https://www.sparksociety.org/resource-blog/2023/11/2/postdoc-bolding-lab

#neurojobs #neuroscience #imaging #miniscope #olfaction #olfactory #photometry #electrophysiology #neuropixels

Jonny Lovelace, Jingrui Ma, ... and Vinny Augustine discovered the vagal pathway underlying fainting, really exciting work, summarized here: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03450-3 , full paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06680-7 (I helped a little w/ neural analyses)

When the mouse faints, its eyes roll back and most neurons across the brain *shut off completely* (at yellow line in first figure, shows one example #neuropixels recording). But neurons in the hypothalamic PVZ increased their firing during this time period (first group in the second figure). These neurons were causally implicated: inhibition increased fainting duration while excitation increased arousal.

#neuroscience #syncope #fainting #vagal #discovery

Update on tracking neurons across days in #Neuropixels recordings: @EnnyvBeest gave a nice talk on it, where she explains UnitMatch. It's a brief talk and it's available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c_dgTZcBaQ&list=PLfhWmWntvjl7kljKozClpjS29DoY8V5pB&index=23&ab_channel=MatteoCarandini

The lectures of the 2023 UCL Neuropixels course are now on YouTube:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfhWmWntvjl7kljKozClpjS29DoY8V5pB&si=UjCmdEFyjZR5BE6Z

The lectures are brief (typically 10-20 minutes) and packed with information. They are a great way to get an introduction to #Neuropixels, and to get up to speed on the latest developments.

Thank you to @EnnyvBeest and Celian Bimbard for organizing a fantastic course, and to the lecturers for doing an amazing job!

(more info on the course is at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/neuropixels/training/2023-neuropixels-course).

New preprint! "Tracking neurons across days with high-density probes", by @EnnyvBeest, Celian Bimbard and team.

Chronic #Neuropixels probes can record from the same neurons for days, but require new approaches for tracking neurons.

Enny and Celian developed UnitMatch, which operates after spike sorting and relies only on the neurons' average spike waveform.

They then validated the results with functional responses – which were remarkably stable!

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.12.562040v1 (1/2)

@brembs Me 🙋‍♂️

Posters about: #time #eventstructure #events #memory #dynamics #entorhinalcortex #hippocampus #gridcells #placecells #remapping #Neuropixels

Ultra-high density electrodes improve detection, yield, and cell type specificity of brain recordings https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.23.554527v2 but #Neuropixels probes offer no brain stimulation; #BCI #NeuroTech

@alicia_izquierdo @elduvelle_neuro our lab does not use dexamethasone with #Neuropixels 🤷‍♂️

@elduvelle_neuro this is great! I’m curious what you and other #Electrophysiologists think of dexamethasone treatment as postop care? It seems a more prevalent practice among those working with #Neuropixels but not amongst the #ephys community-at-large #EphysTip #neuroscience

@susanleemburg @MatteoCarandini @manisha we encase rat #neuropixels implants in a Falcon tube. They're light, rat can't grab anything, and fully protect the hardware. Can share pics if you DM me.

Good afternoon to the coolest of #neuro people! What are your best/favorite #neuropixels headstages for freely moving rats?

Apollo Implant: Reusable, flexible, and lightweight chronic implants for #Neuropixels probes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.03.551752v1 by @MatteoCarandini et al.; #BCI #NeuroTech #neuroscience

From what I can tell, folks that are successfully using #Neuropixels for either acute or chronic recordings are using the metal cap to attach to a dovetail holder. My question for #neuroscience : is there ever a reason to use the version *without* the metal cap?