This work was led by Ania Sumera and Laura Oliveira, but with help from immensely talented students and collaborators, and @edinunineuro.bsky.social @sidb-edinburgh.bsky.social

Despite an absence of AIS shortening in response to sustained activity modulation, we do see other functional changes associated with homeostatic plasticity - including changes in membrane excitability and NMDA receptor function

Hello world!
We just released a thing! In this preprint we provide evidence questioning the ability of the axon initial segment to undergo rapid structural plasticity in intact neurons from mouse, rat, and human cortex.

Meet the Simons Initiative for the Developing Brain: a center devoted to deconstructing the secrets of neurodevelopmental disorders and the developing brain. Read more: annualreports.simonsfoundation.org/2024/scottis... #science #neuroscience

And amazing collaborators @clairedurrant1.bsky.social @sorayam.bsky.social @l-w-taylor.bsky.social among many others not on here :)

This work would not be possible without the patients, our funders @sidb-edinburgh.bsky.social, UK MRC, @edinunineuro.bsky.social

Finally, we show show that GABAB receptor currents are elevated in patients who receive the anti-seizure medication Levetiracetam - regardless of seizure history.

Further, we show that presynaptic GABAB receptors signalling is stronger in human cortical inputs than rodents. This leads to differential control of cortical oscillations.

In this we find that postsynaptoc GABAB receptors signalling undergoes developmental maturation in cortical columns, but is largely stable over adult human life.

What, what! We just published our work studying GABAB receptors in human and rat brain.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our paper in Nature Comms is now online! Summary below but in short we use living human brain slice cultures in a number of different ways to model dementia processes. Big team effort led by myself, @robertmcgeachan.bsky.social and @clairedurrant1.bsky.social rdcu.be/ej647

Friday saw two momentous occasions. The first major study accepted from our lab 🥳 and my 5 year old reciting to me the principles of synaptic strengthening in learning and memory. Immensely proud of both...

True, but if many of the facets of microglial function have been attributed to their role in mouse brain circuits, then perhaps not all is as it seems. A conditional FIRE mouse or rat could/would approach an answer

That is an interesting point. That being said rats lacking the CSF1R gene survive pretty well... see Patkar et al 2021 ... But with some deficits in neuronal progenitors. More to do!

We just published a thing!
In this study, we provide compelling evidence that a lack of microglia during early brain development does not lead to wholesale alterations of synaptic and cellular function.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...