I was recently invited to contribute a guest post on Substack by Vijay Iyer – some years ago one of the main developers of ScanImage in the lab of Karel Svoboda, and more recently a strong advocate for ME/CFS awareness and for communication pathways between brain and body. Earlier this year, we had a series of conversations about circuit neuroscience and the potential of dissecting brainstem circuits. Here’s my write-up on substack, where I describe why I believe that brainstem nuclei may be ideal targets for brain-interfaces, in particular when interfacing (indirectly) with astrocytes: I never meant to study the brainstem.