How do the basal ganglia turn what you see into what you do?
New preprint w/ @kenneth-harris.bsky.social, @flickerfusion.bsky.social & @carandinilab.net: we recorded across striatum, GPe & SNr in a Go/NoGo task. Striatum encodes which stimulus, GPe & SNr encode action. 🧵
biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Let's put more scientists in Congress! Let's put THIS scientist in Congress! :)
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Want to explore connectivity & projection patterns yourself, like we do here? We released brain_street_view to let you pick any injection site in the Allen Connectivity Atlas and visualize where it projects in your favorite region of interest: github.com/Julie-Fabre/brain_street_view
A tool from microsoft (so that’ll probaly be maintained) to convert a bunch of formats (pdf, docx, xlsx, pptx, but also images and audio!) into markdown to feed your fav LLM: github.com/microsoft/ma...
The US/Iran war and escalating rhetoric are already disrupting civilian life and academic infrastructure across the region. We drafted a letter in defense of academic life, and to mobilize concrete support for affected students, scholars, and collaborations. Please check Sepi’s message and sign.
Mon. Mar. 16th, We've got an exciting line-up of scientists in cell type identification (@maxime-beau.bsky.social, Eva Dyer, Anna Lakunina), cell type-informed theory (@aditijh.bsky.social, @mehdiazabou.bsky.social), and cell type-dependent manifolds (@lmprida.bsky.social, Manu Valero)! #Cosyne2026
*Multi-region computations in the brain*
When two regions are better than one...
doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...
#neuroskyence
Applications are open for the 2026 Paris Spring School of Imaging and Electrophysiology! It’s a great way to discover Paris (❤️) while learning a pretty wide range of techniques for neuroscience, in a fantastic environment. Share widely: parisneuro.ovh
Fred Ramsdell was parked at a campground in Montana on Monday when his wife suddenly started shouting. He first thought that maybe she had seen a grizzly bear. Instead, she had regained cell service and had seen a flood of text messages with the same news. “You just won the Nobel Prize!” she yelled.
Neuropixels Ultra!
By @steinmetzneuro.bsky.social, who led a big collaboration
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
100%
Congratulations!!
How does the brain decide? 🧠
Our new @nature.com paper shows that neural activity switches from an 'evidence gathering' to a 'commitment' state at a precise moment we call nTc.
After nTc, new evidence is ignored, revealing a neural marker for the instant when the mind is made up.
rdcu.be/eGUrv
![What do representations tell us about a system? Image of a mouse with a scope showing a vector of activity patterns, and a neural network with a vector of unit activity patterns
Common analyses of neural representations: Encoding models (relating activity to task features) drawing of an arrow from a trace saying [on_____on____] to a neuron and spike train. Comparing models via neural predictivity: comparing two neural networks by their R^2 to mouse brain activity. RSA: assessing brain-brain or model-brain correspondence using representational dissimilarity matrices](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:e6ewzleebkdi2y2bxhjxoknt/bafkreiav2io2ska33o4kizf57co5bboqyyfdpnozo2gxsicrfr5l7qzjcq)
What do representations tell us about a system? Image of a mouse with a scope showing a vector of activity patterns, and a neural network with a vector of unit activity patterns Common analyses of neural representations: Encoding models (relating activity to task features) drawing of an arrow from a trace saying [on_____on____] to a neuron and spike train. Comparing models via neural predictivity: comparing two neural networks by their R^2 to mouse brain activity. RSA: assessing brain-brain or model-brain correspondence using representational dissimilarity matrices
In neuroscience, we often try to understand systems by analyzing their representations — using tools like regression or RSA. But are these analyses biased towards discovering a subset of what a system represents? If you're interested in this question, check out our new commentary! Thread:
attractors are the new receptive fields
🚀 We are excited to share that bombcell is now available in Python! 🐍 Automatically sort your units into good/MUA/noise/non-somatic using quality metrics and interpretable & adjustable classification thresholds.
pip install and play around with our toy dataset:
🔗 github.com/Julie-Fabre/...
I really recommend sending your students to the Paris Spring School, many imaging and ephys techniques are covered in pretty good depth and the atmosphere is consistently fantastic every year! And in such a setting! parisneuro.ovh
we're crowd-sourcing a searchable repository of tangible benefits stemming from federally-funded research. Come enjoy the great stories; or send in an idea; or volunteer to join the team.
publicusaresearchbenefits.com
please share and re-share so we get more great stories in there!
Bombcell icon
🔊New resource: Bombcell, automated quality control for extracellular electrophysiology
💡This is an #opensource, user-friendly toolbox that streamlines quality control for spike sorting outputs.
👩🔬Develop by Julie M. J. Fabre
🔗Link: open-neuroscience.com/en/post/bomb...
#OpenScience #Neuroscience
Thrilled to share our state-of-the-art method for in vivo cell-type classification and brain region localization, NEMO, which is now now a spotlight at @iclr-conf.bsky.social !
We use NEMO to characterize the electrophysiological diversity of cell-types across the entire mouse brain. 🐭 🧪 🧠
Two UCL researchers, including Dr Julie Fabre (@uclqsion.bsky.social) have been named as Schmidt Science Fellows, an award given to 32 exceptional early career researchers worldwide.
Congratulations to both Dr @juliefabre.bsky.social & Dr Almarri on this incredible achievement! 👏
How do we associate the flavors we experience during a meal 🍽️😋 with postingestive effects like food poisoning 🤢🤮 that arise much later?
Our answer in @nature.com this week: Illness signals from the gut reactivate and strengthen flavor representations in the amygdala.
📄: nature.com/articles/s41...
Many of us use 2p scopes to image 3D volumes of brain. But then we analyze the data plane by plane, resulting in duplicated neurons, missed neurons, and low s/n. Let's go 3D!
Suite3D: Volumetric cell detection for two-photon microscopy
by @haydari.bsky.social & team.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
First off, Bombcell is a MATLAB package (python version coming) developed by @juliefabre.bsky.social. It uses several metrics, like waveform shape, spike amplitudes and drift, to determine whether a detected unit is noise, multi-unit activity, axonal or a single neuron.
github.com/Julie-Fabre/...
It was an honour, thank you @rezashadmehr.bsky.social for organizing this great seminar series!
Talk link: m.youtube.com/watch?v=zy0v...
Congrats!!
1/7 Our paper on individual variability in decision-making is finally out in @nature.com! Inspired by the classic work by Mante and Sussillo, we trained many rats to solve context-dependent decision-making, and we found that different brains use different neural mechanisms to solve the same task!
control is a complimentary approach to alignment.
its really sensible, practical and can be done now, even before systems are superintelligent.
youtu.be/6Unxqr50Kqg?...
