Johannes Kappel @jjneuro@qoto.org

The full connectome of the fruit fly is slowly being mapped out.
But how do we make sense of it? Sometimes the anatomy is highly suggestive of a function, but more often than not there are much more connections than we expect and the interpretation is complicated.

I've been slowly collecting papers that try to link a simulation of the connectome with a fly behavior.

Here, I'd like to share one such paper, which uses modeling and connectomics to study the link between development and fly preferences for a particular odor.

The paper is:
"Neural correlates of individual odor preference in Drosophila"
Churgin & Lavrentovich et al
(senior author @debivort )
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.24.474127v1

I presented the paper in the @tuthill journal club this week and wanted to share it here while it's still in my head! 🧵

#modeling #connectomics #Drosophila #neuroscience #PaperThread #JournalClub

Scientists! Have you read Gopen and Swan's 1990 classic "The science of scientific writing"? If not, you are in for a treat.

It's here, albeit weirdly formatted: https://www.americanscientist.org/blog/the-long-view/the-science-of-scientific-writing.

And if you prefer good pagination, check out this scan of the pre-web version: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R9urPA7NWC5qdBqkCTim10tzwRYaLZC3/view?usp=share_link

Too many people still don't know Cop City— an attempt to cut down an Atlanta greenspace and neighbourhood food forest to build a COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY urban warfare training facility— is happening, let alone that APD has tear-gassed and even killed people protesting against them.

They claim that the protestor they killed shot at them first, but somehow, miraculously, only have video of the after-action, not the incident itself.

Y'know, back in 2014 many of us believed the proliferation of body cameras for cops would mean real oversight and accountability. Within months it became clear that the cameras would mean nothing, and not JUST because the cops themselves would oversee the footage rather than a 3rd party.

No, we realised then, and have had it proven time and time again, that bodycams don't mean shit for accountability, because no matter how much police negligence and malfeasance the videos show, LARGE SWATHES of the public and the media will go out of their way to excuse COPS' behaviour, and blame the victims for their own deaths. Especially if those victims aren't white.

Anyway. Check the tag #StopCopCity on some other platforms.

We have a new manuscript from the lab in Cell Reports, Distinctive Synaptic Structural Motifs Link Excitatory Retinal Interneurons To Diverse Postsynaptic Partner Types. Wan-Qing Yu, then co-authors Rachael Swanstrom, Crystal L. Sigulinsky, Richard M. Ahlquist, Sharm Knecht, Bryan W. Jones, David M. Berson, and Rachel O. Wong.

https://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/2023/01/distinctive-synaptic-structural-motifs-link-excitatory-retinal-interneurons-to-diverse-postsynaptic-partner-types/

Open Science #OpenScience #OpenData #neuroscience #astrocytes #zebrafish

We published whole-brain neuron+glia light-sheet calcium imaging data...

... from Mu et al., Cell 2019, 12 fish, 5.9 TB, >1,000,000 cells total + behavior, NWB format

Data: https://dandiarchive.org/dandiset/000350

Paper: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(19)30621-X

Thank you CatalystNeuro + authors for implementing, and
Simons Foundation Global Brain for supporting this effort!

Data is open for everyone to use. We are also happy to actively collaborate!

A surprising finding from the Klaembt lab: myelination in adult #Drosophila: Rey et al. (2023). Glial-dependent clustering of voltage-gated ion channels in Drosophila precedes myelin formation. bioRxiv, 2023.01.09.523229 -- https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.01.09.523229

Visual cortex is affected by sounds. Does this mean it is multisensory? Does it represent sounds?

Today in Nature #Neuroscience (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-022-01227-x) Célian Bimbard and team find otherwise.

Sound-evoked activity in visual cortex was similar across neurons. Even neurons in hippocampus. It persisted after we cut fibers from auditory cortex!

This activity was predicted by… subtle body movements evoked by the sounds. It reflects brainwide state and behavior signals.

#NeuroNewPaper

Here are the promised details of the paper by
@The_En_Yang
in the lab and colleagues. If you are interested in circuits for path integration and their effect on behavior, here is a summary:

https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)01466-0

Dice made of terracotta from Indus Valley Civilization. Harappa, Pakistan. 2600-1900 BC.

you probably aren't boosting enough! here's a rough heuristic for my new fedis: boost with ~the same frequency you would do a "like" on Twitter. (and then favorite with wild abandon because it is just spreading appreciation mostly)

boosting is more about cross-pollinating posts between instances and accounts than it is about representing who you are as a person (though obvs you wouldn't boost stuff that is uh antithetical to you as a person).

at least two directions of effect:

boosting out from your instance: this is particularly important to boost posts from small accounts, as otherwise their posts don't show up for anyone outside your instance.
boosting into your instance: taking stuff you see from ppl you follow on other servers and making that show up on your local feed, also particularly important for smaller accounts so they can find ppl (and also is what makes the local feed fun!

there are some subtleties like asking to boost some sensitive posts, but for things marked public it's usually fine!

#Meta #Boosts

🧠🐒🐐🦘🦙🦌🐷🐻‍❄️🦫🦁🐑🐇🐈🦔🐕🦇🦭🦥🦓
We’ve been diving into the mesmerising anatomical diversity and evolution of cerebellar folding across 56 mammalian species with @r3rt0 Nicolas Traut @AleAliSousa @sofievalk
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.30.522292v1

Check it out in a short tooting thread 🔽

You’ve already heard that Elsevier is evil. That they know this much about you — and that they are selling this data not just to our institutions but to god-knows-who-else — is cause for real, material protest. They may not have a crass loud mouthed billionaire spokesbaby but they’re so, so much worse. Open source, open access alternatives exist. Get them as far out of your life as possible. https://eiko-fried.com/welcome-to-hotel-elsevier-you-can-check-out-any-time-you-like-not/

Admittedly, these days #mastodons have a very special place in our hearts😉 🥰, so this new research really speaks to us! The oldest #DNA ever recovered, from permafrost in Greenland, has revealed that the elephant-like creatures roamed northern #Greenland 2 million years ago. Now a barren polar desert, the area apparently used to be a lush landscape of trees & home to a diverse flora & fauna. 🤗 *Go mastodons, go!* 🐘 😉 https://nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04377-x

First post on this site:

I am advertising an *open post-doc position*.

Topics connected to my current interests: how people use theory of mind to influence other’s thoughts and feelings and/or to make inferences about punishment and other acts of social control; cognitive processes by which individuals create, evaluate, sustain, and undermine legitimate power. Multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary applications are welcome.

Details here: https://bit.ly/saxelab-postdoc-ad.

One of the greatest "How it started/how it's going" examples, EVER.

(via Peter Kafka)

Who can possibly imagine what Elon's politics are? He's so complicated and "savants" are notoriously inscrutable. 😂

#reintroduction #migration

👋

I do #NeuroScience and am interested in the #Circuit dynamics of adaptive but reliable visually guided #Behavior.

In our group at the University of #Bonn, we study

- the stabilization of the neural code in #Vision, #Perception, #Learning, and #Memory

- the pathway-specific processing of #Sensory and #SelfMotion signals

We emphasize ethologically relevant behavior, longitudinal #Optophysiology, and miniaturized and benchtop #TwoPhoton microscopy.

www.troselab.de

🫡

ICYMI last week, a leading German #OpenScience figure took an Elsevier-sponsored professorship:
http://bjoern.brembs.net/2022/12/what-if-greta-thunberg-took-a-shell-sponsored-professorship/

We all know what happened to the Mendeley employees who stayed on after they were bought by Elsevier and hoped they could change the giant from within.

It is not difficult to imagine how Elsevier feels about this latest acquisition.