Hello — I’m Joy, a health & medical writer doing research communications.
I work with researchers and health organizations to turn complex research into clear, responsible communication — research summaries, patient-friendly materials, outreach content.
Just figured out that #neuroscience has its own version of Moore's law: The number of simultaneously recorded #neurons doubles every ~7 years. This scaling has profound implications for #DataAnalysis and #modeling in #ComputationalNeuroscience. In this post, I review Stevenson & Kording's 2011 paper and reflect on its relevance today:
Figure 2 (panels a–i) from Marius Pachitariu et al. (2024) shows graph-based clustering strategies used in Kilosort4 to structure large-scale spike datasets. The figure illustrates how dense, high-dimensional spike features are iteratively reassigned and merged to obtain stable clusters from large neural populations. Panel a sketches the neighbor-based reassignment process that progressively reduces an initially large set of clusters. Panel b shows an example clustering overlaid on a t-SNE embedding of spike features. Panel c presents the hierarchical merging tree used to decide which clusters should be combined based on a modularity cost. Panel d summarizes the criteria for accepting or rejecting merges, combining feature-space bimodality with refractory-period constraints derived from spike timing. Panels e and f show the final clustering result, highlighting units that exhibit refractory periods. Panels g and h characterize the resulting units using average waveforms, autocorrelograms, cross-correlograms, and regression projections. Panel i visualizes the spatial distribution of clustered spikes along the probe. Together, the figure exemplifies how modern spike sorting algorithms impose structure on massive datasets by combining graph methods, statistical criteria, and biophysical constraints. Source: Pachitariu et al., Spike sorting with Kilosort4, 2024, Nature Methods, 914–921, DOI: 10.1038/s41592-024-02232-7ꜛ (license: CC BY 4.0)
🧠💪 Your #brain isn't just a static organ – it's a dynamic system that "remodels" itself based on use. Just like lifting weights builds muscle, pushing your brain into the "discomfort zone" with unfamiliar tasks builds new neural connections that protect your cognitive #health as you age.
I study how brains navigate space - from 2D mazes to fully 3D environments. My focus is on hippocampal place cells, entorhinal grid cells, and head direction cells, combining behavior, electrophysiology, and computational models.
I’m here to share lab findings, discuss interesting papers, and explore how animals map and move through the world.
Occasionally, I’ll highlight moments when the brain does something unexpectedly clever (or confusing).
Excited to meet people in neuroscience and beyond. Always happy to chat about space, brains, or just interesting science in general. 🧠🌍
Want to decelerate your brain’s aging process? Lend a hand. Regularly volunteering can reduce the rate of cognitive aging by around 15–20 percent, according to research by a team from the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Massachusetts. Read more from @:
"The developing thalamus showed the most prevalent expression of autism susceptibility genes... Within the thalamus, excitatory neurons showed the most enriched expression"
Makes a lot of good sense relative to the hyper- and hypo-sensitivity in autism: the neurons that relay sensory signals to the brain are impacted the most.
A new study says that music can alleviate motion sickness — and "joyful" music is the best genre to mitigate symptoms. Here's @FrommersMag's explainer. Find the full results of the study, published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, at the second link (the scientists behind it say more research is needed).