Matthijs Dorst
@mattneuro
Neuroscientist in Oslo. Former Editor. Mucking about with Voltage Imaging and patching. Aiming for a mix of fun, science, and funny science. Trying to be kind. He/him.
While we do most of our recordings with a 1P system, we decided to check what these dopamine axons looked like under @koenvervaeke.bsky.social's 2P microscope. Makes for a darn pretty picture!
Scenes like these feel like they belong in some cute Japanese anime; but it's right here in Oslo! The lab decided to hike up Vettakollen for lunch today; it was lovely, if not a smidge warm.
Happy #FluorescenceFriday! When investigating striatal cholinergic neurons, it's a good idea to check what dopamine is doing. So, @livija-sarauskyte.bsky.social put an axon-expressing GCaMP8s in midbrain dopamine neurons, and imaged dorsal striatum during a simple task. So much going on! 🧠
Added some lighting to the behaviour rig; may have overdone it a smidge? #cyberpunk #mousepunk 🧠
Weirdest thing happened recently: a new #Hamilton syringe cracked and broke (top). I had never seen this before, so I emailed them about it. A week later, a brand new one unexpectedly showed up! Now that's the kind of customer service that makes me happy to buy from them again.
This is such a common occurrence in neuroscience, I learned about it as a trope in undergrad. Heck, @xkcd.com made a brilliant comic about it!
Can't visit Sweden without bringing back some proper chocolate for the lab 😋
Me: "After riding all day, I could do with a beer and a burger" Karlskoga: "Say no more fam"
Today has been a good day to ride. Happy national day, Sweden! #nationaldag #motosky
It is insane; prices for hard drives literally doubled in a year. I get why dropbox and alike are upping their prices, but we're left with essentially no affordable options...
Quick PSA: while they taste the same, a 147Ω and a 10MΩ resistor are not, in fact, interchangeable. You know, if like me, you were wondering why your circuit wasn't working.
Thank you for your sympathy, truly this will be one of the most tortuous weeks of my life
In hindsight, the top and bottom parts probably didn't need provisions for eight M6 bolts to hold them together. But hey, better to have them and not need them, right?
You ever get the feeling you may have slightly, massively overengineered something? Still need to add the electronics, but these should turn into some handy little Arduino-powered training rigs.
What's more beautiful than one ChIN? Three of the buggers, all at once! (note, only the red one is patched)
Just verifying our voltage imaging data agrees with patch-clamp ephys; that's a check! 🧠
It was, of course, not entirely painless. But it did only take me an hour or so to get it running and configured, which is pretty good. After that, all I had to do was change the origin on my repos, and I have become Bob's nephew. Importantly, this preserves the history of a repository! 3/
Two days left, better hurry! (Pretty sure they're braking) #FENS2026 #FENS #FENSambassador
There is an odd, unassuming beauty in freshly machined parts, made to incredible precision. Very lucky we have a team of excellent machinists available at @uio.no!
The replacement battery doesn't quite have the same curve to it, but with some effort, just about fits. Getting the teensy tiny connectors for the screen and battery re-attached was a stressful nightmare, but I got there in the end. And so, another piece of electronics is saved from the landfill!
About nine years ago, I bought a Gear Fit 2. And it's been awesome: light, small, and just smart enough to be helpful, but not too smart to be distracting. Over the years, battery life dwindled from a good three days to maybe half a day. But to my delight, you can still find replacement batteries:
Ever wished you could answer your students' questions with a T-shirt? I reckon this should cover 90% of my bases!
I got this from AliExpress: www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008... (the "5MP 1.5-meter wire, 3.6mm" version) My plan was to use it for eye-tracking, but it has a wide-angle lens with a very long focus distance, so it's not really suitable for that. Which is why its now undergoing a cornea transplant:
You guys want to see something cool?! This is the business end of a cheap dual-mode webcam. It can record using both normal light, as well as infrared. I assumed that meant it had two sensors. There is an audible clicking noise when it switches modes, which I assumed to be a relay. But watch this:
Oh yeah, I am old enough to remember regular appearances of the Twitter fail whale; these things obviously happen. On the other hand, you're telling me the "we will embrace AI coding"-folks' website is broken? CLEARLY that is why it's down, you techbro-coolaid-huffing slopmongrels.
Almost forgot: there was a really cool paper a few years back from Xua Han's lab that also showed a burst-y cholinergic interneuron! www.nature.com/articles/s41...