Category Archives: Imaging

Four interesting papers on astrocyte physiology

A review of four interesting recent papers on astrocyte neuroscience: (1) Norepinephrine Signals Through Astrocytes To Modulate Synapses (2) A spatial threshold for calcium surge (3) Network-level encoding of local neurotransmitters in cortical astrocytes, and (4) Continue reading →

Posted in Calcium Imaging, Data analysis, hippocampus, Imaging, Microscopy, Neuronal activity, neuroscience, Reviews, zebrafish | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

There is no recipe for discoveries

There is no recipe for discoveries, and there is no cookbook on how to publish a paper. But at least there are typical events and routes that are often encountered. Here, I’d like to share the trajectory of a study … Continue reading →

Posted in Calcium Imaging, Data analysis, hippocampus, Imaging, machine learning, Microscopy, neuroscience, Review | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

Why your two-photon images are noisier than you expect

A gallery of calcium imaging recordings of neurons and astrocytes with single noisy frames on the left and averaged beautiful noise-free images on the right side. Continue reading →

Posted in Calcium Imaging, Data analysis, hippocampus, Imaging, Microscopy, Neuronal activity, neuroscience, zebrafish | Tagged , , , , , | 22 Comments

Improving the resonant scanner’s sync signal using a phase locked loop (PLL)

Calcium imaging with two-photon point scanning is the technique to chronically record from identified neurons in the living brain of animals. The central piece of two-photon point scanning microscopes is a scan engine. This can be a complex optical device … Continue reading →

Posted in Calcium Imaging, Imaging, Microscopy, neuroscience | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Interesting papers on recent neuroscience methods

Find below three interesting methods papers relevant for neuroscience. All three of them are, in my opinion, worth a quick read. Acoustic cameras to localize ultrasound vocalization of mice Sterling et al. (2023) from the lab of Bernhard Englitz addressed … Continue reading →

Posted in Data analysis, Imaging, Microscopy, neuroscience, Reviews | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Interesting papers on online motion correction for calcium imaging

In a living animal, the brain is moving up and down in the skull. This brain motion can be due to breathing, heartbeat, tongue movements, but also due to changes of posture or running. For each brain region and posture, … Continue reading →

Posted in Calcium Imaging, Data analysis, Imaging, machine learning, Microscopy, Neuronal activity, neuroscience | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

“Laser Scanners” by William Benner

William Benner is a scanner enthusiast and the president of the company Pangolin. His company sells equipment mostly for laser shows but also for other applications. Some years ago, he wrote a book on “Laser Scanners”, which is available through … Continue reading →

Posted in Imaging, Microscopy | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Self-supervised denoising of calcium imaging data

This blog post is about algorithms based on deep networks to denoise raw calcium imaging movies. More specifically, I will write about the difficulties to interprete their outputs, and on how to address these limitations in future work. I will … Continue reading →

Posted in Calcium Imaging, Data analysis, Imaging, machine learning, Microscopy, Neuronal activity, Review, zebrafish | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Video introduction to CASCADE

A video with tutorial on CASCADE, a supervised method to infer spike rates from calcium imaging data. Continue reading →

Posted in Calcium Imaging, Data analysis, electrophysiology, Imaging, machine learning, Microscopy, Neuronal activity | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Simple geometrical optics to understand and design point-scanning microscopes

Custom-built microscopes have become more and more sophisticated over the last years to provide a larger FOV, better resolution through some flavor of adaptive optics or simply more neurons simultaneously. Professional optical engineers are hired to design the ideal lens … Continue reading →

Posted in Calcium Imaging, Imaging, Microscopy | Tagged , , | 6 Comments