Tag Archives: Calcium Imaging

Open PhD position in my research group

Are you a finishing Master’s student with a quantitative background and are interested in neuroscience? This is your opportunity. Project: You will be supervised by Dr. Peter Rupprecht and Prof. Fritjof Helmchen at the Brain Research Institute, University of Zurich. … Continue reading

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

How to compute ΔF/F from calcium imaging data

Many neuroscientists use calcium imaging to record the activity from neurons (or other cells in the brain). The video below was recorded by Sian Duss and me in hippocampal CA1 pyramidal cells in mice. To make calcium imaging traces comparable … Continue reading

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Online spike inference with GCaMP8

Calcium imaging is used to record the activity of neurons in living animals. Often, these activity patterns are analyzed after the experiments to investigate how the brain works. Alternatively, it is also possible to extract the activity patterns in real … Continue reading

Posted in Brain machine interface, Calcium Imaging, closed-loop, Data analysis, electrophysiology, Imaging, machine learning, neuroscience | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Detecting single spikes from calcium imaging

There are two mutually exclusive holy grails of calcium imaging: First, recording from the highest number of neurons simultaneously. Second, detecting spike patterns with single-spike precision. This blog post focuses on the latter. Many studies have claimed to demonstrate single-spike … Continue reading

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Non-linearity of calcium indicators: history-dependence of spike reporting

Calcium indicators are used to report the calcium concentration inside single cells. In neurons, calcium imaging can be used as a readout of neuronal activity (action potentials). However, some calcium indicators like GCaMP transform the calcium concentration of a cell … Continue reading

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A resource paper for building two-photon microscopes

The article discusses the challenges in learning to build microscopes, highlighting a manuscript by Schottdorf et al. that offers practical assembly instructions and rationale based on years of successful use. It emphasizes useful insights, such as design suggestions, performance compromises, and comprehensive documentation on GitHub, making it a valuable resource for researchers. Continue reading

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Spike inference with GCaMP8: new pretrained models available

Calcium imaging is only an indirect readout of neuronal activity via fluorescence signals. To estimate the true underlying firing rates of these neurons, methods for “spike inference” have been developed. They are useful to denoise calcium imaging data and make … Continue reading

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

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