Today I'd like to honor the memory of my mentor and friend, Roger Tsien, born 1952 February 1. Today would have been Roger's 74th birthday.
Most know Roger for his 2008 Chemistry Nobel Prize with Shimomura and Chalfie. Roger made GFP into the versatile imaging method it is now.
🧠🌟🐭 Excited to share some of my postdoc work on the evolution of dexterity!
We compared deer mice evolved in forest vs prairie habitats. We found that forest mice have:
(1) more corticospinal neurons (CSNs)
(2) better hand dexterity
(3) more dexterous climbing, which is linked to CSN number🧵
And maybe an espresso, too?
Pretty tired from a 12km loop yesterday from highland base camp to Hveradalir in Kerlingarfjöll. Worth the pain, though.
Full professor complaining to an assistant professor on how hard it is to get funding nowadays
There isn't a self-generated (optic flow coupled to locomotion) stimulus in these datasets, which I believe is the crux of the Keller lab argument. But, there are many studies showing enhanced activity to the oddball. I've not a fan of that approach. Sensory predictions are driven by movement, IMO.
This will devastate all of my colleagues that do neuroscience in mice. Drugs don't always translate from mouse to human, But 90% of our genes are shared. They allow recordings and manipulations that cannot be done in humans. We will cede discovery to Europe and China with this unnecessary handicap.
What are the needs of humanity?
Very interesting.
I was hoping you would say something about this impending manuscript, tho.
Manuscript? 👀
must be incredibly frustrating and disheartening to have federal funding that was promised to you for important work suddenly and arbitrarily ripped away
UK neuroscience graduates! PhD opportunity here at Glasgow SPN: www.findaphd.com/phds/project... Closing date July 4
In late January, I said we were "still exploring" a cool thing we found in RN.
Well, we're back, and we've got movement kinematics (thanks to @deeplabcut.bsky.social)!
(You can find all the details in our updated bioRxiv paper, linked below)
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Large-scale projects run the risk of stifling scientific independence. Instead, let’s explore alternative mechanisms of collaboration, writes @neuralreckoning.bsky.social.
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/funding/neur...
It is beyond disturbing when the NIH and HHS Directors do not understand that animal models are essential in research
www.statnews.com/2025/05/19/a...
Other great examples are in the whisker system where the sensory nerve is cut, but movement signals persist. Such as pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40011781/
Ideally, you eliminate sensory feedback during the movement, allowing you to observe the residual motor efference. The best example is in weakly electric fish. Nathan Sawtell and Curtis Bell is a place to look in that regard.
Excited to share my PhD paper! In it, we use targeted 2-photon optogenetic stimulation to determine how V1 activity is read-out in a detection task. We found that network influence, not visual coding properties, predicted the impact of ensembles on behavior - contradicting our expectations (1/5).
Bilateral integration in somatosensory cortex is controlled by behavioral relevance 🧠🧪
@scottrpluta.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
How is this not obvious to everyone but maybe a first year student?
The brain can hallucinate, but calling that hallucination information might be a stretch.
I'm really proud of my two graduate students, Hyein and Hayagreev, for getting this challenging and exciting project across the finish line. We reveal the state-dependent logic that underlies callosal signaling between the somatosensory cortices. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The Oldenburg lab is looking for another postdoc! If you want to use holographic optogenetics to answer questions about neural codes let me know. We like shooting lasers and thinking about movement.
We're located at Rutgers in Piscataway NJ (its like ~45 min from NYC).
oldenburglab.com/positions/
May 2021, shortly after we finished building automated boxes for training mice to perform bilateral discrimination using active touch. The first paper is finally dropping soon.
Our latest editorial in defense of vaccines and vaccination, introduces two Perspectives in this issue on priorities for outbreak vaccination, as well as the important successes of vaccines to date
Please read and spread the word 🙏🏻!
New results!
Evidence for an active handoff between cerebral hemispheres during target tracking
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
#neuroscience
Thrilled that our paper has been published in @elife.bsky.social
doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
We ask: how can a neuron integrate information across multiple time scales?
Twist: This neuron has extreme properties that helps it work ~300x times faster than neurons in the hippocampus
Summary 🧵to follow
My lab @kinshiplab.bsky.social is recruiting a postdoc 🚨 with Sept start date
Preference for in-vivo ephys / circuits experience / interest in applying quantitative methods to natural social behaviour.
Funding & visa fees for 1-yr with possible extension. Send me your CV & visit kinshiplab.org
Our new paper is out in Science.
What is the synaptic plasticity rule in the brain, we asked. It turns out there are multiple, even within individual neurons.
Congrats Jake!
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
(Plz repost)
I’ve been receiving some good news lately and will be hiring at all levels to expand the lab. Please get in contact if you are interested in reinforcement learning, neural plasticity, neural circuit dynamics, and/or hearing rehabilitation.
pierre.apostolides @ umich .edu
Tyvm
