Philipp Schlegel @uni_matrix@qoto.org

@albertcardona @NicoleCRust @neurobongo @xaq

It’s a very fair critique, and some of the PR does us more harm than good. For example, we don’t have a map of 100,000 cells that tells us little, we have an EM volume spanning 100,000 cells that was at the edge of what was possible at the time that still requires a lot of (manual or automated) proofreading to turn into analyzable data.

The full set of initial science papers from the mm3 volume is almost ready to submit, but our existing work has started to reveal details about the nature of connectivity in a cell-type-specific manner. For example, a 2022 eLife paper (Dorkenwald et al.) shows that you see a bimodal distribution of synapse sizes on layer 2/3 cells, but _only_ if you restrict analysis to synapses from other layer 2/3 cells. Similarly, we found a variety of factors that could predict how much chandelier input a pyramidal cell would receive. These data suggest that neurons have type-specific rules for connectivity and plasticity that are hard to see if you can’t separate connections out this way.

More recently (as in Monday), I posted a manuscript to the biorxiv describing inhibitory connectivity across a column of visual cortex that shows that inhibitory selectivity (at least at the cell type level) is the norm, not the exception. In particular, we find selective inhibition not only for each excitatory projection class (IT, NP, ET, and CT) as well as sublaminar groups of IT neurons. This suggests a network of precise inhibition across cortex. We also find a new class of disinhibitory specialist interneuronal that targets basket cells, unlike the well-described VIP->SST circuit. This opens up a host of follow up questions, and we hope that using patch-seq data to link EM data to transcriptomics will help make this experimentally possible.

Ultimately, I think we’re still in the early days of getting the data out and finding the science in it. This is very much like in Drosophila, where the first studies at the whole-brain scale were highly focused. But I believe it will go the same way, becoming a way to study large scale structure at single cell resolution, complementing single lab studies, and helping answer unexpected questions. For example, one of my colleagues noticed that oligodendrocyte precursor cells in the EM looked like they were doing phagocytosis, which wasn’t a known function for them, and she just published a nice PNAS paper (Buchanan et al) about it.

James W. Truman and Lynn M. Riddiford just published a magnum opus on:

"#Drosophila postembryonic nervous system development: a model for the endocrine control of development" https://academic.oup.com/genetics/advance-article/doi/10.1093/genetics/iyac184/6988052

Touches upon insect insulin-like peptides, hormonal control of neuronal growth, metamorphic fates of larval neurons, pruning and its induction by ecdysteroids, remodelling, postembryonic neurogenesis and neuronal fate determination, CNS plasticity in cell composition, apoptosis.

Spectacular!

Enshittification: First platforms want your attention, so they show you stuff YOU want to see. Then they want your money, so they show you stuff THEY want you to see. @pluralistic calls this enshittification.

Tiktok's enshittification (21 Jan 2023) >>> https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/

This excellent essay examines how Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter and Google, exploit algorithms to capture your attention, build dependency, and subsequently “monetize” you by feeding you shit.

1/4
#twittermigration

And yet here you are, controlling what women can do with a bun in the oven.

On #scienceTwitter, my favourite thing were reading and, on rare occasions, writing "paper/preprint threads". From the researchers I followed and through the #Twitter algorithm, this became my most important source for new #research.

While people start to do the same on #Mastodon, I have the feeling that I miss important work bc no algorithm "saves" it for me if I don't watch my timeline constantly.

Two simple solutions would be: a commonly accepted hashtag that everybody uses when writing "paper threads" or a [...] @ a.gup.pe group with a similar adaptation rate.

#Question 1: is there already a mechanism for this that I missed?
#Question 2: What hashtag or group name?
I saw #TootPrint before. Maybe #PaperInAToot? #PaperInAPost? #PaperInAThread? #PaperPost? #MastoPrint?

Suggestions and boosts, please, we need reach for this! 🤓​

#TwitterMigration #Science #Scientist @phdstudents @academicchatter @neuroscience @cognition

Lego models of invertebrates: needs to reach 10,000 supporters to enter production.

“This set features four arthropod model organisms: the fruit fly #Drosophila melanogaster, the red flour beetle #Tribolium castaneum, the amphipod crustacean #Parhyale hawaiensis, and the two-spotted cricket #Gryllus bimaculatus.”

The LEGO account setup accepts throwaway emails, so no need to commit to endless spam.

#entomology #lego #invertebrates #insects #crustaceans

https://ideas.lego.com/projects/c629ad44-59f8-452a-bfba-2b6b96e29f54

Coming over to join the conversation here. I'm a poet, playwright, and scientist, studying the neuroscience of decision-making. Currently also very fascinated by impacts of those processes beyond the neuroscience itself, in fields such as psychiatry, economics, etc (For example, I have a new book on morality.)

Thrilled to share the lab’s first paper, which just came out in
Current Biology: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1gKNX3QW8R%7Efdk
This project, spearheaded by postdoc extraordinaire
Sander Liessem, was our first foray into the world of #insulin signaling in #Drosophila. Just like in humans, worms, and mice, insulin is key to regulating #fly metabolism. Different from vertebrates, however, a major population of insulin-producing cells (IPCs) sits right on top of the fly’s brain and releases insulin into circulation.

Exciting New Year's release of #BigStitcher! It now supports:

1) efficient blocked processing, meaning large, tiled acquisitions are fused blazingly fast (second/minutes instead of hours)!

2) Export of ZARR/N5/HDF5 thanks to the N5-API

Check it out, just update Fiji!

What will happen if we’ll RETHINK our street corners?

We'll realize that until now, we've made them too car-centric. Street corners are designed for fast driving, which means pedestrians have to risk their safety just to cross the street.

But if we’ll rethink our street corners we’ll get

■ More space for pedestrians
■ Shorter crossing distance and time
■ Greener spaces
■ Safer Streets
■ Beautiful street corners

A great example from PGAA Creative Design in Manila

Behind Blue Eyes

Did you know that reindeer are the only known mammal whose eyes change seasonally from golden in the summer to a wintry blue? Their eyes also become a thousand times more sensitive in winter, adapting to dim light in the near darkness to avoid predators.

Part of this is because of changes in the tapetum lucidum (TL), a mirror-like layer under the retina. 1/n

#ScienceSunday #ScienceMastodon #Christmas

I got curious about #ChatGPT and the associated questions related to ownership - so I quickly created a #German #cookbook with outstanding recipes by asking #ChatGPT questions and DALL-E to generate images ... check it out

https://drive.google.com/file/d/17DXeTqENrpP3sHQouPMQ8bujsVYp0Wdp/view?usp=sharing

We are hiring a new endowed Professor in the Indiana University Gill Center! Come join us in an extremely collegial and collaborative environment. We are six chairs working on cellular and molecular neuroscience from various departments across campus Will you be the 7th?! Feel free to DM for details & Please Retoot!

Don’t know who took this shot but it’s kinda epic: a Great Grey Owl lands on a photog’s camera.

New preprint for the lab! We introduce GelMap, a method enabling intrinsic calibration and deformation mapping for expansion microscopy.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.21.521394v1

make better choices

Can anyone from the #xenopus community describe this technique in more detail?

If you are interested in today and future applications of X-ray imaging for life sciences, register now for the LEAPS Meets Life Sciences Conference in Italy next year: https://agenda.infn.it/event/33026/

The revised version of our paper on the desmosomal #connectome of the #Platynereis larva is now out
https://elifesciences.org/articles/71231
by Sanja Jasek et al.
#volumeEM #rstat