Matthijs Dorst

A setup that has devolved into a tangled mess of cable-spaghetti

Past me: "I am going to cable-manage this setup properly, not let it devolve into a tangled mess of cable-spaghetti!"

Current me: *quiet sobbing*

Axonal pathfinding of zebrafish retinal ganglion cells forms the optic nerve. Credit to Dr. Matthew Bostock @houartlab.bsky.social. #ZebrafishZunday 🧪

Any chance there's a spell in there for getting good reviews? Asking for a friend

I love this! I must admit to having a large blind-spot for meetings not in Europe / USA, I really should try to address that.

Hectic and fun! You should visit some time, we do all the imaging!

Cool work, congratulations Nicolas!

A watermain broke near our building yesterday, so they had to shut it off for repairs today, which meant the fire-suppression system didn't work, so our entire building was closed until they could repair it.

Just one of those days.

🔔 Nominations for the 2026 #ALBA-#FKNE Diversity Prize are now open!

Highlight scientists driving progress in diversity, equity and inclusion in #BrainResearch. 🧠

🗓️ Submit your nominations by 8 January 2026
👉 https://loom.ly/IbLJuVQ

Thank you! It's a custom implementation, but based heavily on the behavioural paradigms from Koen Vervaeke. E.g. using the same circuits for lick detection and water dispensing.

See that's forward thinking that is!

New behaviour setup is starting to come together though!

An open hand with half a dozen measurements written on it.

"Nah, I won't need to bring my notebook, I just need to take this one measurement"

Congratulations!

... I think?

Large-scale cellular-resolution read/write of activity enables discovery of cell types defined by complex circuit properties The complexity of the mammalian brain’s vast population of interconnected neurons poses a formidable challenge to elucidate its underlying mechanisms of coordination and computation. A key step forwar...

✨ New preprint ✨ What if we could watch AND control thousands of individual neurons in behaving mice—with stable access over months? 🧠⚡ Our work introduces transgenic all-optical tools that make this possible - and a resulting surprising discovery! 🔭💡
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/13 🧵

Our red calcium indicator, FRCaMPi, and its soma-localized version, SomaFRCaMPi, are now available from @addgene.bsky.social in various vectors, along with all the sensors used for benchmarking. www.addgene.org/browse/artic...

Ooh, good way to get some broader data, thank you!

Thank you! That makes sense; I just realised that none of my immediate colleagues have mentioned going, though it's not come up much. Of course, San Diego is also the furthest away from Europe.

Apropos of nothing, what is the mood regarding 🧠 #SfN this year? Are people choosing not to travel to the USA? Or are we expecting little change from last year?

#neuroskyence

Also: if you're developing a website, it is really easy—and free—to add login via ORCID!

Finally figured out why this lick-port circuit was not working: some absolute idiot mixed up the orientation of a relay on the schematic!

(it was me, I made the schematic)

The machine and procedure that saved my life were invented just a few short years before I was born.

Modern medicine is a goddamn miracle.

I was just talking about this with a local the other day, how strange it is to be this far into November with no snow or frost in Oslo. But no snow either that much further North is wild.

At least you got a beautiful view for lunch!

Back in my day, computers screamed at you when you wanted to connect to the internet, and we really should have heeded their warning.

That reminds me, I need to replace the filters in my air purifiers. Thank you!

A screenshot showing the Zotero style editor

In case this helps: under Tools -> Developer -> Style Editor, you can define your own citation style in Zotero.

It is not the easiest thing to do, but in theory, there is no reference system it cannot implement. If the journal is close to an existing style, making minor tweaks is pretty doable.

Shine on, you magnificent sky-pumpkin!

What is that strange weird yellowish orb, just floating around in the sky?!

In my humble opinion, this depends on whether you are want to know if a paper is relevant and impactful, versus whether its conclusions are sufficiently supported by the presented evidence. Good peer review does both, but I agree that for most papers, no one person can fully assess the latter.

While I certainly agree that nobody can better judge how important a paper is to our work than ourselves, reality is that we do not have the time.

Not when sorting through the onslaught of literature to keep up to date with, nor when evaluating a hundred candidates for a grant or faculty position.

As an aside: journals do a lot more than just send manuscripts for review. A good editor will spend far more time on quality control and contextualisation, than on inviting a few peer reviewers. It's one of those overlooked and underappreciated parts of the job that keep the slop at bay.