Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Nick Steinmetz

Alyssa @lyssa12.bsky.social · 1d

Want to collaborate with the International Brain Laboratory on your own project? They have funding to work with groups anywhere in the world on new projects and are looking for new partners! LOI deadline coming up (Nov 1). Learn more and apply: www.internationalbrainlab.com/ibl-core-apply

Apply to work with the IBL Core — International Brain Laboratory

Apply now to work with the International Brain Lab Core. Contribute to groundbreaking neuroscience research in a global, collaborative environment.

www.internationalbrainlab.com

5 5

Nick Steinmetz @steinmetzneuro.bsky.social · 29d

Exciting opportunity here - if you have a dataset and want IBL staff to run pipelines, develop visualizations or websites, work on QC, etc - or if you want to work on the IBL dataset in a way that needs staff support - then this is for you! Check it out.

International Brain Laboratory @intlbrainlab.bsky.social · Sep 11

Want to collaborate with the International Brain Laboratory on your own project? We have funding to work with groups anywhere in the world to do new large-scale projects and we are looking for new partners! Learn more and apply: www.internationalbrainlab.com/ibl-core-apply

3 8

Reposted by Nick Steinmetz

International Brain Laboratory @intlbrainlab.bsky.social · Sep 3

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 +

2 69 120

Nick Steinmetz @steinmetzneuro.bsky.social · May 17

I like this one from George & Koob 2010, especially when the goal is to convey that it's complex to the point of absurdity doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...

2 6

Reposted by Nick Steinmetz

Carlos Brody @carlosbrody.bsky.social · May 7

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!

Searchable database of tangible benefits that federally-funded research gave us.

A crowd-sourced site. Health and Well-being. National Security. Prosperity.

publicusaresearchbenefits.com

1 110 130

Reposted by Nick Steinmetz

Kara Marshall @karalmarshall.bsky.social · May 3

Gave a talk at my parents’ retirement community to describe how science is done, and what is at stake. There was a ton of interest, and anyone can do this. Get the word out about how science affects everyone. I’m happy to share slides with anyone who asks- just get in touch! youtu.be/BY_SFgi-Cig

Kara Marshall PHD-History of Science in America - Trilogy at Tehaleh 04/27/25

YouTube video by Steve Lawson

youtu.be

17 77 270

Reposted by Nick Steinmetz

UW Neurobiology & Biophysics @uw-nbio.bsky.social · Apr 30

Congratulations to Adrienne Fairhall, Prof. of Neurobiology and Biophysics, Adjunct Prof. of Applied Mathematics, and Adjunct Prof. of Physics, who has just been elected to the National Academy of Sciences! 🍾 🎉

5 33 180

Reposted by Nick Steinmetz

Dr. David Miller 🏳️‍🌈 @davidimiller.bsky.social · Mar 12

🧪 The NSF director is lying to you.

Let’s fact check 7 claims from yesterday’s letter to the community, while pointing out 3 critical omissions. 🧵

Long letter from NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan, available here: https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/Letter-to-the-Community.pdf

11 320 490

Nick Steinmetz @steinmetzneuro.bsky.social · Mar 8

Standing up for science in Seattle - some lab members (Zhiwen, Nancy, Fabiola, and Jeremy) plus lab-friend Harsha @harshag.bsky.social. If only it seemed like there was the remotest chance anyone in the administration cared about our voices.

3 20

Reposted by Nick Steinmetz

Matteo Carandini @carandinilab.net · Feb 7

Neuropixels and Optogenetics are delighted to announce the birth of

Neuropixels Opto

Combining high-resolution electrophysiology and optogenetics

Today in bioRxiv

960 sites, 28 emitters, 2 colors

By Lakunina, @karolinazsocha.bsky.social, Ladd, et al

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

(1/2)

A Neuropixels Opto probe with 3 blue emitters and 3 red emitters lighting up in succession, with corresponding neural activity in different layers of the cortex.

7 120 320

Nick Steinmetz @steinmetzneuro.bsky.social · Dec 23

Be serious now. Hiring/grants/etc committees don't give you any credit for papers that you are a named coauthor on but aren't first or last, anyway. 🙃 So I don't think anyone in IBL is doing this but it wouldn't help them if they were.

1 1

Nick Steinmetz @steinmetzneuro.bsky.social · Dec 15

Maybe not the genome being less robust but the protein systems that are built from it. Example in the paper is how a heterozygous allele could produce two similar versions of a protein that work at different temperature ranges, so you can deal with more environmental noise before breaking.

1 3

Nick Steinmetz @steinmetzneuro.bsky.social · Dec 15

Yes, and genetic heterogeneity often counteracts development stochasticity, such that inbred strains are, counterintuitively, more phenotypically variable. academic.oup.com/geronj/artic...

Selecting Animal Models of Human Aging: Inbred Strains Often Exhibit Less Biological Uniformity Than F1 Hybrids

Abstract. Most gerontologicdl research is conducted using inbred strains of animals in an attempt to maximize phenotypic uniformity within experiments and

academic.oup.com

1 2 4

Nick Steinmetz @steinmetzneuro.bsky.social · Nov 20

Re: neuropixels, it is. Imaging voltage. (But also, there is a real explanation for the name)

5

Nick Steinmetz @steinmetzneuro.bsky.social · Dec 17

Congrats to Zhiwen Ye for his amazing work leading this project and making these discoveries!! And thanks to all co-authors for outstanding contributions. #neuroskyence

4

Nick Steinmetz @steinmetzneuro.bsky.social · Dec 17

We believe these results show that dynamics in the brain, even specific traveling waves with detailed links to local anatomy, are distributed globally. So, the moment-to-moment spatiotemporal dynamics observed in any one region cannot be understood in isolation.

1 1 6

Nick Steinmetz @steinmetzneuro.bsky.social · Dec 17

Combining widefield imaging and Neuropixels ephys from thalamus, striatum, and midbrain, we found that these traveling waves were shared across all these regions, and multiple areas of cortex, simultaneously. Check out the paper for details on how we quantified this.

1 1 4

Nick Steinmetz @steinmetzneuro.bsky.social · Dec 17

Shockingly (to us), an open dataset of axonal reconstructions revealed that cortical neurons have axonal branching patterns that actually match this circular arrangement.

1 3

Nick Steinmetz @steinmetzneuro.bsky.social · Dec 17

We found prominent spiral waves that were commonly centered in the middle of somatosensory and motor cortex. We could see these with widefield calcium imaging and with ephys in cortex.

1 1

Nick Steinmetz @steinmetzneuro.bsky.social · Dec 17

(no gifs on bsky, what the heck? Guess you can see it at this dropbox link - www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/m278n... )

1 2

Nick Steinmetz @steinmetzneuro.bsky.social · Dec 17

In this work, Zhiwen discovered a new type of spiral wave dynamics in the mouse brain, identified a matching axonal architecture, and showed that this striking activity pattern is distributed across cortex and subcortical areas at once.

1 2

Nick Steinmetz @steinmetzneuro.bsky.social · Dec 17

Traveling waves of activity have been observed in many brain regions and species, usually just in one area per paper. Should we think that each brain region has its own wave dynamics, kept hidden from its synaptic partners? Or have we just been unable to see the big picture?

1 1

Nick Steinmetz @steinmetzneuro.bsky.social · Dec 17

Have you wondered whether fast spatiotemporal brain dynamics like traveling waves are local, confined to just one region, or whether they are shared across many regions simultaneously? The latest work from Zhiwen Ye in my lab has the answer! Thread-
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Brain-wide topographic coordination of traveling spiral waves

bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution

www.biorxiv.org

1 7 23

Reposted by Nick Steinmetz

International Brain Laboratory @intlbrainlab.bsky.social · Oct 24

Going to SfN this year? Join us for a workshop on how to use the IBL Brainwide Map dataset to test your own hypotheses! For more information and to register, visit internationalbrainlab.org/sfn2023 #Neuroscience #compneuro #sfn2023

Neuropixels insertions shown on a mouse brain

5 13