Luigi PetruccoMay 3, 2023

Heading direction maps in the larval zebrafish? 😲
With an anatomical organisation? 🤯

Finally time for a paper tooth!
Check out the final version of our work from the Portugues lab with coauthors Hagar Lavian, You Wu, Fabian Svara and @vilim: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-023-01308-5
#neuroscience

While imaging (restrained) fish larvae, we observed a peculiar bump of activity propagating clockwise and anti-clockwise over a paired hindbrain nucleus. The bump was moving when the fish was turning left or right!

Show threadLuigi Petrucco

But the most beautiful thing happened when we looked at EM volumetric data and started tracing those neurons. We found an exquisite (for vertebrate standards!) topographical organisation of the reciprocal connections that the neurons form in an enigmatic structure, the interpeduncular nucleus. The topology of the axons and dendrites was in agreement with the hypothesis of a ring attractor network-like connectivity matrix!
#connectomics

Here is a beautiful teasing trailer from @vilim:

May 3, 2023 at 6:15amWeb
Show threadLuigi PetruccoMay 3, 2023

Alas, this was out on the Springer group, as -for sad that it is- the authors still need the IF for grant funding and future tenures. This costed humongous APCs, luckily covered by German tax payers (as well as a botched layout).

But it is open-access, and the data and code to reproduce every single figure is out with the paper, curated and documented!
#opensource #opendata #openscience