Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Zoé Christenson Wick @zoechristensonwick.bsky.social · 9d

Interested in studying how neural circuits underlying mental health disorders are shaped by experience (e.g., stress)? Also interested in being trained by an amazing, thoughtful, and rigorous scientist? Also interested in living in a beautiful Canadian city? See below!

Zach Pennington @zachtpennington.bsky.social · 9d

I’m hiring at all levels and accepting graduate students through Psychology and the Graduate Program in Neuroscience. Reach out if you’re interested in joining a collaborative, fun, creative, and supportive team in beautiful Vancouver! 🏔️ ⛷️ 🏖️ 🌆

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Zoé Christenson Wick @zoechristensonwick.bsky.social · 9d

Hooray!!!! Huge congratulations Zach!!!

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Reposted by Zoé Christenson Wick

The Friedman Brain Institute @sinaibrain.bsky.social · 16d

We're looking forward to the first annual New York Memory Hub conference later this week! Can't wait for all the talks and discussion about all things learning and memory 🧠

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Zoé Christenson Wick @zoechristensonwick.bsky.social · 20d

Amazing work as usual Abhilasha! 🤩

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Reposted by Zoé Christenson Wick

Abhilasha Joshi, PhD @rhythmicspikes.bsky.social · 21d

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🚨 New preprint! 🚨

Excited and proud (& a little nervous 😅) to share our latest work on the importance of #theta-timescale spiking during #locomotion in #learning. If you care about how organisms learn, buckle up. 🧵👇

📄 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
💻 code + data 🔗 below 🤩

#neuroskyence

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Zoé Christenson Wick @zoechristensonwick.bsky.social · 22d

Huge congratulations to the new cohort of Fellows-to-Faculty awardees!! 👏

Reposted by Zoé Christenson Wick

Simons Foundation @simonsfoundation.org · 22d

Announcing our 9 new Fellows-to-Faculty Fellows! These awards help senior postdoctoral researchers with fresh perspectives on autism & neuroscience transition to tenure-track faculty positions: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/simons-foundation-announces-recipients-of-2025-fellows-to-faculty-awards/

Simons Foundation Announces Recipients of 2025 Fellows-to-Faculty Awards

The Simons Foundation is pleased to announce the 2025 class of Fellows-to-Faculty Fellows.

www.simonsfoundation.org

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Zoé Christenson Wick @zoechristensonwick.bsky.social · 24d

Thank you Bree! Hope you’re doing well

Zoé Christenson Wick @zoechristensonwick.bsky.social · 27d

Congratulations!!!! Such a huge milestone, it’s time to celebrate!! Also how are we still in perfect synch with these things, even after 6 years 😂

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Zoé Christenson Wick @zoechristensonwick.bsky.social · 27d

BiPOLES really came in clutch at exactly the right moment for us. Thank you for making it available!

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Reposted by Zoé Christenson Wick

Johannes Vierock @johvierock.bsky.social · 27d

Amazing! Congratulation Zoe 💪🥳this great application of #BiPOLES and a really cool paper👍

Zoé Christenson Wick @zoechristensonwick.bsky.social · 27d

(This is the part of the paper where I had to summarize many. many. many. years of work in 2 sentences):

PhaSER works best to shift the phase locking of interneurons when coupled with bidirectional manipulations (thank you, BiPOLES!!!) 👏 @simwieg.bsky.social @johvierock.bsky.social

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Reposted by Zoé Christenson Wick

Tristan Shuman @tristanshuman.bsky.social · 27d

Check out new work from our lab! We developed a new way to directly control the precise timing of interneurons during behavior and found that theta phase locking is a causal mediator of seizure susceptibility in both healthy and epileptic mice.

Zoé Christenson Wick @zoechristensonwick.bsky.social · 27d

🚨New preprint alert🚨
We used closed-loop optogenetics to causally test the importance of inhibitory spike timing in network function and found that manipulating PV+ cell theta phase locking in the dentate gyrus can shift seizure susceptibility (both ways!)

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Zoé Christenson Wick @zoechristensonwick.bsky.social · 27d

Couldn't have done it without your help 😍

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Zoé Christenson Wick @zoechristensonwick.bsky.social · 27d

This is also probably the moment to share that I am officially on the job market! If you are looking to add a neuroscientist with expertise in hippocampal physiology (especially interneurons), oscillations, epilepsy, and aging to your dept hit me up! I have funding!
(www.zoechristensonwickphd.com)

Zoé Christenson Wick @zoechristensonwick.bsky.social · 27d

And a very special shout out to my co-first author Paul Philipsberg. He doesn’t internet, but he’s a phenomenal grad student in the lab and the literal wizard behind PhaSER. If you use PhaSER (github.com/ShumanLab/Ph...), you have him to thank!

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Zoé Christenson Wick @zoechristensonwick.bsky.social · 27d

And it all couldn’t have happened without the incredible team of people that worked on this over the last 6 years. Words cannot convey how amazing a group this is.

@susieyufeng.bsky.social @laurenmvetere.bsky.social @denisejcai.bsky.social @tristanshuman.bsky.social

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Zoé Christenson Wick @zoechristensonwick.bsky.social · 27d

Side note: if you can find an opto-tagged SOM+ cell in the epileptic dentate, I will personally give you $5. 💰

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Zoé Christenson Wick @zoechristensonwick.bsky.social · 27d

There are tons of cool nuggets in this preprint: how to do pilo in transgenic mice (it’s complicated!), really interesting sex differences in epilepsy, why stimulation alone doesn’t work to shift phase locking, etc etc…

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Zoé Christenson Wick @zoechristensonwick.bsky.social · 27d

Finally, we tested if altered PV+ phase locking was sufficient to induce seizure susceptibility in otherwise healthy animals, by shifting PV+ spiking to the peak of theta… And it was!

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Zoé Christenson Wick @zoechristensonwick.bsky.social · 27d

Then we applied this manipulation to test if, in epilepsy, restoring PV+ interneuron spiking to the trough of theta could reduce seizure susceptibility. It did!

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Zoé Christenson Wick @zoechristensonwick.bsky.social · 27d

(This is the part of the paper where I had to summarize many. many. many. years of work in 2 sentences):

PhaSER works best to shift the phase locking of interneurons when coupled with bidirectional manipulations (thank you, BiPOLES!!!) 👏 @simwieg.bsky.social @johvierock.bsky.social

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Zoé Christenson Wick @zoechristensonwick.bsky.social · 27d

Now, there’s a long list of disorders with altered phase locking. But finding the causal role of this change in spike timing was impossible due to limitations in technology.

Enter, 〰️PhaSER 〰️: a closed-loop system that delivers phase-locked manipulations to ongoing oscillations.

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Zoé Christenson Wick @zoechristensonwick.bsky.social · 27d

[email protected] and @susieyufeng.bsky.social previously showed that DG interneurons have dramatically altered theta phase locking in epilepsy. Not only did we replicate this (2x!), we found that PV+ interneurons specifically showed theta phase locking deficits in epilepsy.

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Zoé Christenson Wick @zoechristensonwick.bsky.social · 27d

But let’s start from the beginning.

First: phase locking profiles in dentate PV+ and SOM+ cells in healthy mice. PV+ cells were highly coupled to the theta trough while SOM+ interneurons showed more widely distributed spiking. (I think this is really cool and I have theories...)

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Zoé Christenson Wick @zoechristensonwick.bsky.social · 27d

Link here:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Interneuron theta phase locking controls seizure susceptibility

The timing of neuronal activity is highly precise and often organized by brain-wide oscillations. Many neurons modulate their firing rates at specific phases of theta (known as theta phase locking), c...

www.biorxiv.org

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