Quite the faff, 2 amazing PDRAs and a crazy good PhD student. Still, made writing the limitations section quite easy 😉. I hope all is well with you Mick!

Excited to highlight a new paper from my graduate student Sergio Bernal Garcia who, together withLuke Hammond, developed RESPAN, a new deep-learning pipeline automating the segmentation of neuronal morphology and dendritic spines from fluorescent microscopy images:
www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Great credit must go to the team Filippo, Liad, and the rest of the gang for persevering and demonstrating that (mainly SST) interneurons contribute to the formative activity that sculpts and creates the circuits that underpin our conscious thoughts. Thanks also to our funders @ukri.org!

A rather 'unique' paper from our lab is online in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social now. Unique in the sense that I don't think anyone else will be rushing to optotag cortical interneurons in the early postnatal brain... because it is nigh on impossible!

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Two faculty positions in my department this year. Please spread the word! And don't hesitate to reach out if you want to learn more.

Many thanks to all the team and our collaborators but especially Gabriel Ocana-Santero for his amazing in vivo imaging and Hannah Warming for her patching skills. The work was funded by grants from @ukri.org and @erc.europa.eu

Increasing 5-HT during this time through genetic, pharmacological (SSRIs) or adverse stimuli results in an altered trajectory for the development of GABAergic interneurons, impacting early activity and – in the case of SSRIs – that present through to adulthood.

The article is here: rdcu.be/epHXV

Our study on the impact of altered serotonin (5-HT) signalling on the developing sensory cortex is now live at Nature Comms.

We use longitudinal in vivo imaging of 5-HT and neural activity to show that this neuromodulator is buffered in early life to promote bottom-up instruction of sensory areas.

Save the date!

We're organising a workshop on Data Sharing on the 10th of February at Guy's Campus (KCL)! All you need to know to make your datasets open to the public + engaging in open science practices.

More details to come soon — stay tuned!

Congratulations to Gabriel! @interneuron.bsky.social

Well done Ivan! @interneuron.bsky.social

For sure! Although my feeling is that Mother Nature always finds a way to (a proximity of) normal.

This sounds interesting... definitely one to check out.

Thank you so much Zoltan @zoltan-molnar.bsky.social and Gilad for being such wonderful examiners! The perfect academic end to the calendar year

Thanks @nkourdougli.bsky.social

Fast-spike interneurons in visual cortical layer 5: Heterogeneous response properties are related to thalamocortical connectivity

Some L5 INT with strong input from LGN and visual responses more similar to L4 INT than those receiving little direct LGN input.

www.jneurosci.org/content/earl...

I’m might be biased but we’re getting there with tracking circuits over development and into adulthood (in mice). Some interesting commonalities/pathways emerging

biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

We did this. Beautiful work from the 🦋less Gabriel Ocana-Santero & team. More to follow soon but state-dependent neuromodulation is coming to developmental neuroscience in a big way 🧠🧪

Neuroscience students asked us to teach a PRACTICAL course on experimental methods, and it is now on YouTube!

Please like and repost to help us get the word out!

www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Lecture 1: Signals and data acquisition
Focusing on hardware, digital/analog I/O, synchronization
🧵

A toolbox for ablating excitatory and inhibitory synapses

elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

Our 2nd new Doctor in as many days! Many congratulations to Gabi on the successful defence of his thesis (in vivo 5-HT in neurodevelopment; preprint out soon!). Huge thanks to the 🦋less, elite examining team of Oscar Marin & Colin Akerman, also co-PI Trevor Sharp and Serotonin & Beyond @ec.europa.eu

NEW DOCTOR from the lab, Antara Majumdar🥳 🍾 thanks to @kerrywalker.bsky.social @jpassecker.bsky.social for examination & 2nd supervisor @interneuron.bsky.social. Here is Antara's preprint, came out right around the US election and X being deserted: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Looking for an escape over the holiday?
@meikeesther.bsky.social and I published a ViewPoint looking at the intersection of Developmental and Systems Neuroscience titled “More Than a Small Brain: The Importance of Studying Neural Function during Development”

www.jneurosci.org/content/44/4...

A huge pleasure to repost this announcement - over 40 students have graduated from our fantastic @sussexneuro.bsky.social PhD programme, and each year brings new perspectives and opportunities for both the new joiners and ourselves as their hosts. Do consider applying!