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Author Archives: P.T.R. Rupprecht
Discrepancies between calcium imaging and extracellular ephys recordings
To record the activity from a population of neurons, calcium imaging and extracellular recordings with small electrodes are the two most widely used methods that are still able to disentangle the contributions from single units. Here, I would like to … Continue reading
Alignment tools
This blog posts covers some tools and techniques that I’m typically using to align two-photon microscopes. If you’re an expert, you will probably find nothing new, but if you haven’t been doing this for years, this might offer you some … Continue reading
Posted in Imaging, Microscopy
Tagged Alignment, laser scanning microscopy, Microscopy, Optics, Two-photon
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Matlab magic spells
Most neuroscientists who analyze their data themselves use either Matlab or Python or both – the use of R is much less common than in other fields of biology. I’ve been working with Matlab on a daily basis for >10 … Continue reading
Annual report of my intuition about the brain (2019)
How does the brain work and how can we understand it? I want to make it a habit to report some of the thoughts about the brain that marked me most during the past twelve month at the end of … Continue reading
A practical guide for adaptive optics
There is no standard curriculum to learn practical procedures about microscopy: how to align a setup, how to identify misalignments, how to identify broken parts, where to buy components, how to check their performance, and much more. How to learn … Continue reading
Review: An artificial ground truth for calcium imaging
Selected paper: Charles, Song, Tank et al., Neural Anatomy and Optical Microscopy Simulation (NAOMi) for evaluating calcium imaging methods, bioRxiv (2019). What is the paper about? Calcium imaging is a central method to observe neuronal activity in the brain of … Continue reading
Posted in Calcium Imaging, Data analysis, Imaging, Microscopy, Neuronal activity, Reviews
Tagged Data analysis, Microscopy, photons, PSF, Scanning
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The cell-attached soundtrack of calcium imaging
Old-school electrophysiologists like to listen to the ephys signals during experiments. For example, this allows to precisely hear when the patch pipette approaches a target neuron. The technique is discussed in the Axon Guide: “Audio Monitor: Friend or Foe?”. The … Continue reading
Posted in Calcium Imaging, electrophysiology, Imaging, Neuronal activity, zebrafish
Tagged electrophysiology, Microscopy, photons, zebrafish
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Post-publication review: Somato-dendritic coupling of L5 neurons in V1
It requires more than a quick look at the abstract and the figures to fully understand a research paper and its limitations. One way to get there is to write a summary or critical review of a paper. In a contribution to … Continue reading
Posted in Calcium Imaging, electrophysiology, Microscopy, Reviews
Tagged Dendrites, electrophysiology, photons, theoretical neuroscience
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Post-publication review: “Precise excitation-inhibition balance controls gain and timing in the hippocampus”
It requires more than a quick look at the abstract and the figures to fully understand a research paper and its limitations. One way to go there is to write a summary or critical review of a paper. In a contribution to … Continue reading
Photon yield and pulse dispersion
This case report describes how a two-photon microscope was found to come with a fluorescence yield that was lower than expected; how the underlying cause was found out in a systematic manner; and how the problem was solved. All approaches and solutions are specific for the microscope under question. However, I hope that this report (1) will inspire other people who are troubleshooting or optimizing their microscopes, (2) will help other people better understand two-photon microscopes and the relevance of technical details. Continue reading
A blog about neurophysiology 