New @ucleye.bsky.social & @uclqsion.bsky.social research reveals a unified explanation for how neural activity shapes blood supply across the entire brain.
www.ucl.ac.uk/brain-scienc...
@carandinilab.net
@agnesland.bsky.social
When it comes to blood flow in the brain, not all neurons are created equal. Rather, only a subset of neurons may be driving vascular changes, a new study finds.
By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/neurovascula...
The supply of blood to brain tissue is thought to depend on the overall neural activity in that tissue, and this dependence is thought to differ across brain regions and across brain states. However, studies supporting these views have measured neural activity as a bulk quantity and related it to blood supply following disparate events in different regions. Here we measure fluctuations in neuronal activity and blood volume across the mouse brain, and find that their relationship is consistent across brain states and brain regions but differs in two opposing brainwide neural populations. Functional ultrasound imaging (fUSI) revealed that whisking, a marker of arousal, is associated with brainwide fluctuations in blood volume. Simultaneous fUSI and Neuropixels recordings showed that neurons that increase activity with whisking have distinct haemodynamic response functions compared with those that decrease activity. Their summed contributions predicted blood volume across states.Brainwide Neuropixels recordings revealed that these opposing populations coexist in the entire brain. Their differing contributions to blood volume largely explain the apparent differences in blood volume fluctuations across regions. The mouse brain thus contains two neural populations with opposite relations to brain state and distinct relationships to blood supply, which together account for brainwide fluctuations in blood volume.
How does blood flow relate to brain activity? We discovered that it reflects two neural populations affected oppositely by arousal. Together, they explain neurovascular coupling in all brain regions and brain states!
Out today in Nature: rdcu.be/fdC2A
@uclbrainscience.bsky.social
New paper out 🎉
Awake fUSI is powerful, but motion can strongly bias the data, even in head-fixed experiments.
In this paper, we tried to systematically characterize those artifacts, benchmark denoising strategies, and turn that into practical recommendations for awake fUSI of mouse brains.
1/12
All talks of the 2025 UCL #Neuropixels course are now available: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
For more information on the course see the website: www.ucl.ac.uk/neuropixels/...
And for those at #SfN, come say hi at the #Neuropixels booth (Number 3731) or at my Poster 👋.
Happy Neuropixeling!
Work done in the great @lsp-ens.bsky.social
Happy to see my last PhD paper (finally!) out 🥳
Cross-species ferret vs. human, fUSI vs fMRI, round 2!
Is the human cortical hierarchical gradient in background invariance also found in ferrets? Yes!
Are they supported by the same mechanisms? No!
Find out more: 👉 elifesciences.org/articles/106...
Join the 2025 UCL Neuropixels course (free and online!),
22-24th of October:
Day 1 and 2: Get started with the basics and the latest updates on hardware & software.
Day 3: Focus on how to analyse the many neurons you recorded.
More info and to register:
www.ucl.ac.uk/neuropixels/...
Thrilled to share that our work is now published in Science! ✨
We found a preference for visual objects in the mouse spatial navigation system where they dynamically refine head-direction coding. In short, objects boost our inner compass! 🧭
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
🧵1/
Two flagship papers from the International Brain Laboratory, now out in @Nature.com:
🧠 Brain-wide map of neural activity during complex behaviour: doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09235-0
🧠 Brain-wide representations of prior information in mouse decision-making: doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09226-1 +
Promising solution to facilitate or extend the uses of fUSI! 🤩
This looks pretty cool: ultrasound can now see through the skull! 🧠🔊
The skull has long been a barrier to ultrasound. This reprint shows how to make it quickly transparent → enabling full-depth, high-res fUSI in mice (& humans! 🤯🤯)
Huge congrats to the authors!!!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Introducing our new favorite stimulus. A few minutes are enough to map the visual preferences of thousands of neurons.
Mapping the visual cortex with Zebra noise and wavelets
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
By Sophie Skriabine and Max Shinn, with Samuel Picard and
@kenneth-harris.bsky.social
A new study led by @timothysit.bsky.social reveals that different layers of mouse V1 integrate visual and non-visual signals differently.
Activity is dominated by vision (or spontaneous fluctuations) in L2/3 and by movement in L5. This leads to different geometries.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
New by Agnès Landemard (@agnesland.bsky.social) & co
Brainwide blood volume reflects opposing neural populations
Brainwide fluctuations in blood volume arise from two populations with opposite relation to brain state and distinct relationships to blood supply
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
