News:
2022-09-28
Deadline to request short talks at BARRELS 35 approaching
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2022-09-26
Berlin conference - reprise
Not everything in Berlin does not work ;-)The Anatomische Gesellschaft Tagung was pretty well organized and fun to participate. Thank you Imre, Viktor and Matthias (and everybody else).
2022-09-26
116th meeting of the Anatomische Gesellschaft in Berlin
Berlin called and approximately 350 anatomists came to participate in the conference. In the "ehrwürdige Gemäuer" of the "Wilhelm-Waldeyer-Haus", in the shadows of the Charité building, we saw some remarkable keynote lectures (e.g. Zoltan Molnar) and scientific sessions (e.g. Neuroanatomy, with Merve). In the poster session, Flore and Mirko presented a very appealing poster on "intersectional" VIP cell types. Thus, our institute was well represented.Thank you very much Merve, Flore and Mirko for your contributions!
2022-07-25
Job announcements
Dear visitor,please be aware that all our job announcements (to be found below) are still or again valid.
Do not hesitate to apply, in case that you fulfill the prerequisites.
2022-07-19
Business trip 2022: when hot guys defy the hot wheather
We were always lucky with our business trips, not only but not the least for the wheather. So, no suprise that in these days it was better than good. Never mind, it was all fascinating in Bad Sooden (seeing Allendorf only from afar) and we learned a lot about salt. We furthered our senses on the barefoot path on the Hohe Meissner mountain (at a lush 29 degree Celsius) and then wanted to jump into the cold waters of Werratalstausee. But the water was NOT cold. It more felt like a bath tub. Anyway, altogether it was big fun. Thank you organizers, job well done!
2022-07-11
Lausanne Barrels Meeting and VIPs
A short note on our own account: the talk about VIP neurons was well received and stimulated a lot of discussion, mainly towards the "exciting" idea that they may release GABA, acetylcholine and VIP to cause multiple effects in target cells. What a pity that Huib Mansvelder decided to talk about intelligence (and the brain) instead of about VIP subtypes' connectivity. It seems most discoveries on the cell types still need to be made ... .
2022-07-10
Fantastic conference at a fantastic location
After a delay of 2 years, due to (guess) ..., the Barrels community met in Lausanne to celebrate the 50th anniversary of barrel cortex discovery with the first live conference after the pandemic (and at least in Switzerland no sign of it ever having existed was apparent). It was a feast of science and great hospitality by the main organizer Carl Petersen and his team at the EPFL.Well, there were so many terrific talks that naming anyone and not mentioning other seems like heresy. From the start by a trio uncovering the the whisking CPG in unprecedented detail (Kleinfeld/Wang/Golomb) to the end by Josh Huang who marveled us with a motor command story in the higher order motor cortex for eating, no presentation disappointed - also not the student ones!
Don't miss the next chance to be there yourself!
2022-05-25
Pink phase is over ...
Hooray, we have a new group picture (as you can see on the landing page)!The pink phase (dictated by the pandemic) is over and merges into a green phase (which gives a lot of hope for better times to come). Of course it was also necessary because of the dynamics in the group, which saw several former group members leave while new ones arrived.
Best of luck to all former, present and future ones ;-)
2022-05-19
Why not praise a good thing twice!
... enjoy!
2022-05-19
Why not praise a good thing twice!
After the successful thesis defence by Simon, there was not time to celebrate this properly. Now we managed to catch up on this. In an voluptuos barbecue party, we could enjoy great food, great wheather and great company. Thanks to everybody for all the phantastic contributions and for being there!
2022-05-14
NEURONEX reprise
Since the virtual world obviously has its limits when it comes to discussing data in detail, the chance to meet with Neuronexers from London (Ontario) in Göttingen was a very fruitful opportunity at which we learned how nicely comparable and also complementary our data on marmoset patch clamp electrophysiology is. This adds momentum to the project, which certainly will present more challenges to be met. Nevertheless, the first steps towards an exciting goal are made.
2022-05-10
Update on NEURONEX
Certainly it is a big challenge to start an international consortium during a pandemic. Nevertheless, due to the high committment of all participating PIs and group members, we have been able to create substantial progress that is about to be reported soon. For IRG2 in Göttingen this means that some 150 neurons were successfully recorded, preferentially in marmoset prefrontal cortex. This was only possible due to the invaluable support of Prof. Hinkel and Dr. Mietsch from the German Primate Center.For those who are interested to learn more about Neuronex, please check out:
https://www.nxwm.io/
In its final state, our data will be integrated into a database that has been taking great shape recently:
https://primatedatabase.com/
2022-04-05
As times go by ...
young medical students become young doctors. In this case, Simon Badura finally earned his MD degree, after having done his work at our lab in 2014/15. Nevertheless he could convince us with his performance at today's thesis defence.The title of his dissertation is: GABA-B-Rezeptor-vermittelte Modulation an Martinotti-Zellen im primär somatosensorischen (Barrel) Kortex der Maus
Congratulations to you Simon - and many thanks to his direct supervisor Mirko Witte.
2022-03-27
A little "back to normal"
After waiting for more than 2 years, the SFB 889/GGNB class Sensory and Motor Science finally went on the trip to the Austrian Alps to have an in-person retreat. It was so MUCH FUN in Ramsau am Dachstein!Not only gave all students very good to excellent presentations, also hotel, food, social interaction and wheather could not be better than this.
Thank you very much Susann, Jakob and Nicola!
2022-03-17
Was Schopenhauer actually a brain science visionary?
Well, one could somehow image that! He was keen to state that: "The brain works as the stomach digests"Now, some years later, experimental evidence was gathered and published (not by us!). If you are interested, please check out
Journal of Neuroscience16 March 2022,42(11)2205-2220;DOI: https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1285-21.2021
The Sensory and Motor Components of the Cortical Hierarchy Are Coupled to the Rhythm of the Stomach during Rest
Ignacio Rebollo and Catherine Tallon-Baudry
2022-01-21
An anatomist's perspective
2021-12-23
Mal bin ich "dösend", mal bin ich "wach": Danke SST-Neurone!
Auf der Uni-Seite, recht gut versteckt:https://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/3240.html?id=6541
2021-12-16
... and just to add
Maybe we already have a great reputation for the the most awesome "Doktorwagen" but we are strongly building a secret reputation for the most spectacular cakes as well! If this is not a good reason to join us I really can't help you ... .
2021-12-16
The day Secret Santa came to the Institute for Neuroanatomy
was a fine day - and as always the wheather god was very kind to us.Thank you very much for such an enjoyable event!
2021-12-14
So this is christmas ;-)
Just a little bit early for a christmas present but always welcome: another paper being published!Thanks to Andreas Neef and colleagues, we could collaborate on a project that studies the "sensitivity" of cortical neurons to different input regimes, which cover very broad frequency bands relevant for in vivo signal processing. If you want to learn more, please check out:
Theta activity paradoxically boosts gamma and ripple frequency sensitivity in prefrontal interneurons
https://www.pnas.org/node/1018705.abstract?collection=
2021-12-08
eLIFE paper is published
I am very happy to announce that only 1 month after its acceptance the final paper has now been published in eLIFE. If you are interested inLactate is an energy substrate for rodent cortical neurons and enhances their firing activity
please check out the paper at
https://elifesciences.org/articles/71424
2021-11-23
Succeeding under pandemic conditions
What is this? Professors wearing face masks, students wearing face masks, colleagues wearing face masks, audience being largely on Zoom, no party allowed? Well, of course, it is a thesis defense in year 2 of COVID19.That this can be successful, and a little bit of fun, was proven by my PhD student Anouk Meeuwissen who passed her "final exam" on WED 17th of November in the SMN branch of the GGNB. Congratulations!
A special thanks goes to her direct supervisor, Julien Guy, who was instrumental for this success.
2021-11-16
Wenn aus Janis ... Dr. Hülsemann wird
... dann hatte bestimmt wieder Mirko seine Finger im Spiel.Dieser Dr. med. war sehr erfreulich, denn Janis brachte das Kunststück fertig, ca. 6 Jahre nach seiner aktiven Phase im Labor, noch voll im Thema zu stehen. Herzlichen Dank an Janis für die tolle Leistung und Mirko für die gute Betreuung (und den super Doktorhut).
2021-11-10
Is good luck twice already a lucky streak :-)
This is always very good news - manuscripts being accepted and getting on the way of becoming a "paper". Papers are forever and this is why they should be good (at least). I am pretty sure this is what we have achieved in two collaborative projects:1. With Andreas Neef's group: "Theta activity
paradoxically boosts gamma and ripple frequency sensitivity in prefrontal
interneurons" has been accepted for publication in PNAS. This manuscript shows the exquisite sensitivity of adapting GABAergic interneurons (putative SST neurons) in mouse prefrontal cortex to different statistical properties of input frequencies as measured by dynamic clamp.
2. With Bruno Cauli's group: "Lactate is an energy
substrate for rodent cortical neurons and enhances their firing activity",
has been accepted for publication in eLife. This manuscript shows that lactate is an important energy substrate and its
metabolism shapes neuronal activity in the rodent somatosensory neocortex
through KATP channels.
Watch out for these papers getting published!
2021-11-09
When the best is not possible, second best has to do the job
From 03.-05.11.2021, BARRELS XXXIV was held another time online. Shall we be happy or sad?Well, of course we should be happy that with Zoom, and all the possibilities for virtual interaction, it really feels like a good scientific exchange. But of course all socializations aren't that easy, especially when you basically span all global time zones.
So, the organizers (and here I mean especially, Robert, Randy and Drew) did a great job, as did the symposium organizers and speakers as well as all of the some 150 participants.
Hope to see you next year in Lausanne first and then whereever the SfN will lead us to.
2021-10-31
It was not the first but probably the last time
At least for this year's barbecue events!Well, the sun was in our heart and the hot sausages (together with all the delicious stuff prepared by the pictured people from my lab) were delicious, so it was all fine and also a good occassion to celebrate the birthday of Sabrina.
Thanks very much to all organizers and activists!
2021-10-14
A new medical doctor was born
After having accomplished several other milestones in life, Lisa Tohermes (formerly Thieke) successfully defended her MD thesis entitled "Nachweis der Expression metabotroper GABA-B-Rezeptoren in GABAergen Interneuronen des somatosensorischen Kortex mittels Immunhistochemie".As so often, this would have not happened without Mirko serving as her direct supervisor. So thanks Mirko and Lisa for that
AND, thanks also for the fish (äähh, cake) afterwards.
2021-10-04
Did you know that ...
... also whisker follicles contain "tons of PIEZO2" ?So, happy whisking to you Ardem Patapoutian !!!
... not so sure about how many good TRPs you can have with hot social whisking but I am sure these receptors are also hanging around ;-)
So, all the best for you and your research, too, David Julius !
2021-09-22
The 115th Annual Meeting of the Anatomical Society happens right now
And probably not too many people do notice :-(Well, as so many conferences, this one -supposed to take place in Innsbruck- had to be shifted into the virtual realm. But why did it have to be organized as a webinar? Anyway, I am happy that we will have two high-class contributions:
1.) Mirko will talk about neuromodulatory effects of GABA-B-receptors on fast inhibitory synaptic transmission showcasing the work of his talented medical students
2.) Felix presents a poster on disinhibitory circuit motifs, in which translaminar VIP-to-SST connections are studied with paired whole cell recordings.
Good luck, guys (meaning an active and attractive audience ;-)
2021-09-20
Eile mit Weile / Haste makes waste
... seems to be the slogan of Science Advances ;-)At least, it would be one explanation why it took rather long to publish this paper:
H3 acetylation selectively promotes basal progenitor proliferation and neocortex expansion
It is a tour de force through epigenomic characterization of basal progenitors, seaching for molecular mechanisms that make our neocortex human.
Check out, if your are interested:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abc6792
Congratulation to Tran and all the coworkers involved!
2021-09-16
New Insight into Serotonergic Neuromodulation on Striatal Synapses
Published yesterday in Journal of Neuroscience, a paper from the "previous life" of our Neuronex-postdoc Stefan Pommer, provides compelling evidence that 5HT acts via 5HT1b-receptors to modulate lateral inhibition by striatal spiny projection neurons (also called medium-sized spiny neurons) via presynaptic transmitter release reduction. If you are interested to learn more, please check out
https://www.jneurosci.org/content/41/37/7831
Congratulations, Stefan !
2021-09-09
What a great curriculum we have here in Göttingen (Disclaimer: just a personal opinion)
I just stumbled over it by chance (and I hope that:the next German Chancellor has visited this seminar)Profilierungsseminar
Credits NoteGeneral Seminar 4 1,7Cosmic Pathways to Life (Seminar Astro-/Geophysics)
Profilierungsbereich Mathematik-Naturwissenschaften (6 C)
Credits Note Physik für BundeskanzlerInnen, ManagerInnen und BürgerInnen
3 bestanden Physik für Bundeskanzler, Manager und Bürger
2021-09-06
Successful thesis defense by Pauline
What an intense and successful journey!On Monday, 23rd of August, Pauline successfully defended her thesis entitled " Molecular mechanisms underlying cortical (mal)formation: case studies of ESCO2 and EXOSC10"
I won't tell you what is behind these acronyms but the moelcules come from vastly different worlds. Nevertheless, when you knock them out, the phenotypes have a lot of commonalities. If you want to know more, check out at our "Publications" page. Certainly, we will hear more form Pauline, not only bcause she will continue her research with Tran Tuoc's group in Bochum.
CONGRATULATIONS, Pauline - and thanks to all people in the lab who supported her on her "final day in Göttingen".
2021-07-06
BAF strikes again ;-)
Congratulations!
There seems to exist nothing that BAF doesn't control. Now Eman succeeded to publish a substantial part of her thesis work showing that also oligodendrocyte precursors do not mature properly when BAF155 and 170 is knocked out. Look out for the publication in Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology onConditional loss of BAF (mSWI/SNF) scaffolding subunits affects specification and proliferation of oligodendrocyte precursors in developing mouse forebrain
2021-06-11
A special paper accepted at Science Advances
After a very long journey, and by embracing many eminent colleagues in the field, Tran's group (together with André Fischer's group) managed to get accepted a manuscript that tells the exciting story of putative molecular (epigenetic) mechanism in neocortex expansion in primates. If you are interested, check out Kerimoglu et al."H3 acetylation selectively promotes basal progenitor proliferation and neocortex expansion"
soon to be preprinted in Science Advances.
2021-06-10
Cake-O-Mania
Enjoy!
2021-06-10
2 birthday children, 4 cakes, 8 people
Something is happening in Germany and in our lab! It has gotten hot, we are vaccinated and we can have social interactions. This turned out quite right to host a little birthday party for Merve and Mirko who both happen to be born on the same day. Happy birthday and thanks for the terrific cake.
2021-05-26
In the flow ..., another manuscript accepted
In their rush of productivity, Tran Tuoc's group, is soon to publish another paper, again with the "proven and tested" first author Godwin Sokpor, for whom it was a substantial part of his PhD project.If you are interested in migration and cortical development, please check out:
Loss of BAF complex in developing cortex perturbs radial neuronal migration in a WNT signaling-dependent manner
2021-05-05
Vaccination for the team
The Neuroanatomy reaearch group is taking part in the fight against the pandemic. Many thanks to the UMG vaccination team.
2021-04-21
Elsevier has a bad reputation but ...
.... they work very professionally for their authors!
The whole review process, including editor support, was very smooth and cooperative and the production of the PDF successful at first trial I had a lot of less pleasant experiences on this recently. So, if you are interested in something that will go behind the paywall after final publication, please click on
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306452221001536?dgcid=author
It will bring you to Sokpor et al.,
Ablation of Vti1a/1b Triggers Neural Progenitor Pool Depletion and Cortical Layer 5 Malformation in Late-embryonic Mouse Cortex
2021-03-17
WED 17th of March 2021 18:33h or some 10 years later ...
Oh this is so cool!I am really happy since I hate unfinished projects (there are much too many of these). Now, as of today, we can let the world know how the story on vti1/2 double knock-out that Kunwar et al. published in 2011 in PNAS continues. This is mainly due to the efforts of Godwin who managed as a shared first author to get it published in Neuroscience. This was made possible by the major support of the other first authors Joachim and Ajaya.
Ms. No.: NSC-20-0886R2
Title: Ablation of Vti1a/1b triggers neural progenitor pool depletion and cortical layer 5 malformation in late-embryonic mouse cortex
Section: Developmental Neuroscience
CONGRATS and thank you so much everybody who contributed over the years :-)
2021-03-09
We are not on Twitter
BUT, I "re-tweet" something just for the fun of it. (Honi soit qui mal y pense.)•The
gains in Brain are mainly in the stain.
(Floyd Bloom)
•Faced with an anatomical fact proven beyond doubt, any physiological result that stands in contradiction to it loses all its meaning…. So, first anatomy and then physiology; but if first physiology, then not without anatomy.
(Bernhard von Gudden, 1824 – 1866)
• •If someone pointed a gun at us and threatened oblivion if we did not say the single word most significant for understanding the brain, we should say neuroanatomy. (Edelman GM,Tononi, G, In: A Universe of Consciousness. How Matter Becomes Imagination. Basic Books, 2000)
2021-03-04
Successful collaboration in CRC 889
Running in its 10th year, the CRC 889 enabled another successful collaboration with the Loewel and Schlüter labs! In a meticulous effort, PhD Student Rashad Yusifov managed to perform in vivo-2P spine imaging in V1 under monocular deprivation in PSD95-knock out mice after sparsely labeling L2/3 pyramidal cells with in-utero electroporation.This study was now published in PNAS: "Spine dynamics of PSD-95-deficient neurons in the
visual cortex link silent synapses to structuralcortical plasticity". Congratulations to Rashad and everybody else who was involved!
2021-02-15
Pauline does it!
It seems like Pauline has a lucky streak with her dissertation project. Last week, her first paper (or is it already her second?) has been accepted at Stem Cell Reports. It deals with yet another level of regulation by BAF complex, this time at the RNA level and is entitled:"Molecular profiling reveals involvement of ESCO2 in intermediate
progenitor cell maintenance in the developing
mouse cortex"
mouse cortex"
Congratulations to Pauline and eveybody else involved in that project!
2021-02-01
First paper of the new year accepted at PNAS
Last week, a collaboration with the Löwel group came to a fruitful end. Her PhD student, Rashad Yusifov, is the first author of a manuscript entitled "Spine dynamics of PSD-95-deficient neurons in the visual cortex link silent synapses to structural cortical plasticity", which was now accepted at PNAS.Congratulations go to Rashad and everybody else involved in this beautiful study conducted with the CRC 889.
2021-01-06
Paper accepted at Development
This year hast started with quite some remarkable achievements. Now another one has been added by the acceptance of:Post-transcription regulation by the exosome complex is required for cell survival and forebrain development by repressing P53 signaling by
Pauline Antonie Ulmke; Yuanbin Xie; Godwin Sokpor; Linh Pham; Orr Shomroni; Joachim Rosenbusch; Tea Berulava; Andre Fischer; Uttiya Basu; Huu Phuc Nguyen; Jochen Staiger; Tran Tuoc
Congratulations to everybody involved!
2021-01-04
A good scientific start into the New Year
So now it's 2021! Of course there are more important things these days than a new paper being published. Nevertheless, while we all wait for a vaccine to bring more normality in our lives, it is also spirit-lifting to see a great publication on which we have been working so many years now "in print". In a way, 2021 can become a good year.Thanks again to Nora and Maren for making this nice piece of science happening!
Sensory input drives rapid homeostatic scaling of the axon initial segment in mouse barrel cortex
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20232-x
2020-12-21
How to get a new group picture?
2020 brought so many changes, not the least COVID-19 that for the moment promises to stay with us for a while. Since a lot of people left our group in 2020 and many new ones joined, it was high time to update our group picture. But how to do that under the current circumstances? Well, Santa Claus helped us with an idea that you can see on our loading page! Have fun with identifying all the new and old group members. Thanks everybody for making this happen!
2020-12-16
50 years of barrel cortex reloaded
As 2020 comes to an end -and the planned conference in Lausanne has been shifted to next year- I would like to take this opportunity to make you aware that our review (with a biased view of course) on this exciting research period has now been published in its final form in Physiological Reviews. Please check out:https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/physrev.00019.2019.
2020-12-15
Was gar nicht so lange währte ..., wurde am Ende noch besser
Doktorarbeiten erfolgreich abzuschließen ist immer etwas besonderes. Dieses Mal hat es Kristina Glöckner zum Dr. med. dent. geschafft, nachdem sie am 10.12.2020 ihre Arbeit Elektrophysiologische Charakterisierung von GABA-Rezeptor-vermittelter Inhibition an Martinotti-Zellen der Schicht 5 im Barrel-Kortex erfolgreich verteidigt hat.Herzlichen Glückwunsch und auch vielen Dank an Alle, die das ermöglicht haben!
P.S.: Der private Besuch der Gänseliesel erfolgte mit einem ausgeklügelten Hygienekonzept ;-)
2020-11-26
One of many happy endings in science
I call this setting the right priorities in life!As you can see, Michael found his luck in Michelle - and married her in this autumn. After that he revised his PhD thesis and it is now ready to be finally submitted!!
2020-11-24
Nature Neuroscience comment published
Sometimes the devil is in the details, many of which were fixed on the way to publication. Except for one, the typo in a name, my name. It is strange how much a single exchanged letter can change the appeal of something. Steiger is not the same as Staiger, usually. But as you can see on our Publications page, yes it is an original contribution from us to an effort of the community, in order to achieve a future common nomenclature for cortical cell types. I hope you find it helpful (it is open access)!https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-020-0685-8
2020-11-16
How plastic can an axon initial segment be?
Pretty much!As a very pretty paper that was just accepted at Nature Communications will soon show the world ;-)
In this cooperation with Maren Engelhard, we were able to show for the barrel cortex that acute stimulation or deprivation of whisker-dependent tactile inputs leads to the rapid homeostatic plasticity in AIS of excitatory neurons in the corresponding barrel-related columns. Watch out to read more in
"Sensory input drives
rapid homeostatic scaling of the axon initial segment in mouse barrel
cortex" by Nora Jamann, Dominik Dannehl, Nadja Lehmann, Robin Wagener,
Corinna Thielemann, Christian Schultz, Jochen Staiger, Maarten Kole, and Maren
Engelhardt [Paper #NCOMMS-20-09269B]
2020-10-11
Another Scientific Reports manuscript accepted
It always feels good when long-standing collaborations come to a successful end. In this case it was one with Werner Kilb from Heiko Luhmann's group in Mainz on "NKCC-1 mediated Cl- uptake in immature CA3 pyramidal neurons is sufficient to compensate phasic GABAergic inputs". This manuscript has just been accepted at Scientific Reports.Congratulations!
2020-09-24
POM again
A couple of years after Alvar's first paper made it first as the Paper of the Month (POM) and finally even as the Paper of the Year in 2016, I now have the pleasure to announce that Xiaojuan's recent publication also made it POM in February 2020. This is well deserved since she achieved to combine a high level of insightful data on GIN cells with a beautiful illustration of their microscopic and ultrastructural features. Congratulations!https://anatomische-gesellschaft.de/?post=gewinner-der-paper-of-the-month-in-2020
2020-08-26
All good things have to come to an end
After working for approximately 7 years at the Institute for Neuroanatomy as an independent junior research group leader, Tran Tuoc has found a permanent position at the University of Bochum (Dept. of Human Genetics). With him, also Linh and Godwin have moved, thus leaving Eman, Pauline and Xiaoyi here, in order to finish their projects. Thus our interactions will remain productive for the next couple of years.Best of luck at your new scientific home, Tran et al :-)
2020-08-26
Why is science always happening in waves?
After sailing for quite some time in a wave trough, it seems that the lab has now reached the crown of another wave of publications.It felt totally awesome to see the Phyiological Reviews paper being published online ahead of print. It was also heart lifting to see the online version of a community effort on cell type classification being posted on the Nature Neuroscience server.
Furthermore, tonight the good news reached us that Georg's second PhD project had been accepted by Cerebral Cortex, after having reached quite some views on the preprint server. If you are curious, here is the link to BioRxiv.
2020-08-24
Review manuscript published ahead of print
There are easier and there are harder achievements. This was a very hard one due to many reasons. But as it is probably often the case after deliveries, soon the pain if forgotten and the joy remains. Also in the case of this Physiological Reviews paper, which was finally accepted recently and now is available online ahead of print. Together with Carl Petersen, we covered 50 years of barrel cortex research on whisker-based sensory perception and the underlying cell types and circuits. Let's hope that the community likes this kind of encyclopedic ressource.Please check out:
2020-06-05
Good news from Scientific Reports
Recently, a beautiful collaborative paper on the characterization of optogenetic viral vectors in the monkey was accepted for publication in SREP!In this study, entitled Histological assessment of
optogenetic tools to study the fronto-visual and fronto-parietal cortical network
in the rhesus macaque an in-depth characterization of AAV2/5-CaMKIIα-eNpHR3.0-mCherry, -ChR2-eYFP,
-C1V1-mCherry is presented. Well done, Michal and Janina.
2020-06-03
BARRELS XXXIII goes virtual
2020-05-12
Update on: Celebrate 50 years of barrel cortex research with us
Dear Barrels afficionados,due to the Corona crisis and the associated travel regulations, we have decided to postpone the meeting to next year. Please find the new date and according information here:
2020-04-21
Corona takes its toll on conferences
Recently, some conference organizers took action and did the expectable: they either shifted their conference in to the next year (e.g. Lausanne - 50 years of barrel cortex) or venture the virtual realm (FENS Forum "in Glasgow"). Also the Barrels 33 meeting, supposed to be scheduled right before the Neuroscience 2020 conference in Baltimore, will happen in the digital world, in a format still to be designed, since a time zone of 10 hours needs to be respected.What a pity! So many missed fruitful and pleasant personal interactions.
2020-04-08
Corona and science
The news blog was sparse in recent times. Not that there had been nothing happening, it was just the rush to keep up with the latest Corona developments (and their consequences for work) that kept us busy.There is good news and bad news (as always ;-). The good news is that an opinion paper on cell types and their putative nomenclature was accepted at Nature Neuroscience. This brings a fruitful conference (The Brain Conferences - The necessity of cell types for brain function, Copenhagen October 2018) to an even more rewarding end.
The bad news is that the FENS forum in Glasgow will be held as a virtual conference. This is bad because it is the human touch that makes conferences of this kind special. But of course, not all the conferences of the year 2020 can be shifted into the future, conference schedules are already tight throughout the year.
Take care and stay healthy!
2020-03-02
Celebrate 50 years of barrel cortex research with us
In the biannual series of "European Barrel Conferences", this year, Carl Petersen will host a meeting termed "50 years of Barrel Cortex" in Lausanne, lasting from 08.-10.07.2020. Please check out and register at
2020-01-05
First paper of the new year published
Although the new year is still young, I am happy to announce that there is a first paper out. It is about how to measure whisker movements and locomotion, containing the reeler mouse as one of several mouse models examined. Enjoy!
2019-12-14
Second helping
... and there was a second table at the Kartoffelhaus, unfortunately it was too long to get everybody on the picture.
2019-12-14
Oh, is it already Christmas again?
Another message that is not twittered out to the world: we already had our Christmas party! Well, already is not the right expression since Christmas seems to be just around the corner - and we also brought the first tree ever into our building. As you can see, we had a nice dinner in a cosy restaurant and played some "relaxing" games (no drinking ones ;-) that Mirko prepared for us. It was a pleasant end for a pleasant year.
2019-12-13
This time it is eLIFE
Hooray, together with the group of Carl Petersen at the EPFL, Michael, Pavel and me could contribute to a study named "Pathway-, layer-and cell-type-specific thalamic input to mouse barrel cortex". As the title says, it is a pretty comprehensive optogenetic mapping of inputs from the VPM and POm on all kinds of target cells in the barrel cortex.Watch out for it getting "printed"!
2019-12-10
More doctors for the world
In the big rush of this year, 3 new "doctors" have been delivered to the world by us.These are- Godwin Sokpor "Cortical patterning and neuronal migration are under the guide of BAF complex functionality"
- Michael Feyerabend "Thalamocortical innervation of GABAergic interneurons in mouse primary somatosensory vibrissal cortex"
- Christina Bachmann "Loss of BAF 155 impairs neurogenesis in the developing olfactory system of mice"
A BIG thank you for all your efforts to make this a success and of course to everbody else who helped on the way!
2019-11-26
Another manuscript accepted
I am happy to announce that another manuscript has been accepted in late 2019!It is a collaboration with Robyn Grant that stems from her times being a postdoc in Tony Prescotts lab. Here, we present a first description of quantitative parameters of reeler mice whisking. In short: they are much more normal than anything else! Watch out for the publication to get printed.
2019-11-05
Cerebral Cortex paper now Online
In a cooperation with Bianca Brunne and the late Michael Frotscher, we contributed some data on cortical layering in mice, which got their reelin gene knocked-out specifically in GABAergic neurons. This was achieved by corssing a floxed reelin mouse with a Dlx 5/6 cre-driver line. The results show suprsingly mild effects, mainly on dentate gyrus features.If you want to learn more, it's open access:
2019-10-23
Cool conference at a cool place
So long to prepare, so quickly being over: Barrels XXXII is already history. A great one, though! Not only the session with Julien, Chinfei, Dan and Gavin was very insightful. Also the social behavior (singing mice, helping, rats, gambling monkeys and incest blocking brain areas) and the cerebellum talks were simply enlightening. The local organizing committee did a great job (thanks to Gordon), too. We will come back!
2019-10-15
We are heading for Barrels 32
This week, Georg, Michael and Julien will visit and contribute to the 32nd Barrels Meeting, the longest running satellite symposium of the SfN-Neuroscience meetings. It is going to be a VERY exciting happening!BARRELS XXXII
The 32nd
Annual Barrels Society Meeting
Thursday & Friday
October 17 & 18,
Northwestern University,
Chicago Campus
Feinberg
School of Medicine
Robert H.
Lurie Medical Research Center
303 E Superior St, Chicago, IL 60611
Thursday
October 17, 2019
“Readjusting cortical circuits during development”
Chinfei Chen, Harvard University
"Wiring and rewiring Information lines in sensory thalamus"
Dan Feldman,
University California Berkeley
"Somatosensory cortex as a model for understanding circuit deficits in
autism"
Julien Guy,Georg-August Universitaet Göttingen
"Circuit imbalances and sensory processing in a
model cortex without layers"
Gavin
Rumbaugh, Scripps Research Institute
"Top-down control of tactile functions by the autism risk gene
syngap1"
Plenary Lecture
Hongkui Zeng,Allen Institute
for Brain Science
"Integrated
cell type classification in the mouse cortex"
Friday October 18, 2019
“Neocortical activity and the organization of social behaviors”
Michael Long,New York
University
"Neurobiology
of Vocal Interactions"
Peggy
Mason,
University of Chicago
"The
neurobiology of helping: Lessons from Order Rodentia"
Keren Haroush,
Stanford University
"Social
representations in the primate brain"
Michael
Brecht, HumboldtUniversität Berlin
"Blood
is thicker than water"
“Cerebellar circuits in behavior”
Richard Warren, Columbia University
"Whisker-Guided sensorimotor transformations on the move"
Paul Chadderton,
University of Bristol
"Organisation of whisking-related signals at the input and output layers
of cerebellar cortex"
Clement Lena,
Ecole Normal Superior
"Interactions of the cerebellum with whisker sensorimotor cortices"
2019-09-25
Cell Reports paper published
We have been waiting for this moment for a long time! After starting with rabies tracing in 2013 and finding out later that most viral vectors have a substantial amount of TVA leak expression, we are very pround that we were able to control this problem to the best possible extent. We were also lucky that in the meantime intersectional viral vectors were introduced so that we could clean up the PV cell population from the 10 % of pyramidal cells in L5 that do express PV. Congratulation and thanks to Georg for not giving up!
2019-09-19
Wüzburg meeting of the Anatomische Gesellschaft
The final program of the 114th Annual Meeting of the Anatomische Gesellschaft (25.-27.09.2019) is published and we are looking very much forward to contributing 2 talks on GABAergic neurons in the reeler cortex. Julien and Georg will present their latest results on sensory processing and connectivity of mainly VIP neurons in the mutant and in wild type controls.
2019-08-26
Wiley is superfast!
In a record time, our accepted paper was produced by Wiley and is already Open online!The nice effect of the DEAL with Wiley is that the open access fees were paid via this agreement. Let's hope that there will be a solution with Elsevier soon.
If you like nice EM, please check out:
2019-07-30
Fantastic: another manuscript accepted!
What a great day: Georg's manuscript at Cell Reports has been accepted after a long and extensive revision. Whatever, the study got even better and the reviewers were very pleased! I am really proud that after all the troubles we had to face with the method, we could finally come up with this:Mapping the brain-wide afferent inputs of parvalbumin-expressing GABAergic neurons in barrel cortex reveals local and long-range circuit motifs
Georg Hafner 1, Mirko Witte1, Julien Guy 1, Nidhi Subhashini1, Edward Callaway2, Karl Deisseroth3, Lief Fenno3, Charu Ramakrishnan3, Jochen F. Staiger1
2019-07-30
Manuscript finally accepted
We are very happy to announce that the Journal of Comparative Neurology has accepted a manuscript, which was mainly prepared by Xiaojuan and thus can be regarded as a "farewell present" by her! It is entitledCharacterizing the
morphology of somatostatin-expressing interneurons and their synaptic
innervation pattern in the barrel cortex of the GIN mouse
Xiaojuan Zhou1, Ima Mansori1, Tatjana Fischer1,
Mirko Witte1, Jochen F. Staiger1
In this paper we describe the synaptology of the GIN cells, which are by and large Martinotti cells and innervate small, non-GABAergic dendrites.
2019-07-17
Convocation of the Glorious Three
On a very special day for our lab, 3 PhD students at once were going through the sequence of convocation ceremony, kissing Gänseliesel and doing some heavy partying. No doubt, all three of them certainly deserved the special attendance that they got. Congratulations to Huong, Kamila and Georg and many thanks to the people who worked hard to make this day a success!
2019-07-08
Business trip 2019: episode II
When it was all sunshine and blue skies, the wild bunch, consisting of 15 very young, young, and not so young anymore scientists (excluding the meritful photographer) set out to conquer the Diemel. We succeeded!!
2019-06-24
Cerebral Cortex paper now Online
Here we go! An exciting piece of science is finally available fully open. Please check out at
2019-06-24
Business trip 2019: wet from above and wet from below
On Wednesday, 19th of June, we went out for our yearly trip to a location well appreciated by us: the Hofgut Stammen. After a long canoe trip on the Diemel with lots of fun above and below the water, we had farmers games (including milking cows), barbecue and beach volleyball and a "little" thunderstorm. Never mind, in our ninth year, we had nine times the best wheather you can wish for.
2019-04-26
Manuscript finally accepted
What a struggle! After 3 rounds of review and satisfying probably 6 different reviewers, we finally made it again into Cerebral Cortex.
Neuromodulation leads to a burst-tonic switch in a
subset of VIP neurons in mouse primary somatosensory (barrel) cortex
the work by Alvar, Martin and Mirko that created so much excitement during the last 2 years, has finally a home to be proud of.
Congratulations for an excellent piece of work!
2019-04-25
New publication
After having had 5 manuscripts in revision, with 3 more being reviewed, surely this second accepted paper of the year will not be the last one. Funnily, the manuscript just accepted was the last one submitted. Let's hope that the scientific community will consider it small but beautiful (helpful), Thanks to Zsuzsa, Csaba and Mirko for keeping the faith!
2019-03-26
Göttingen meeting of the German Neuroscience Society
As every other year, the "Neurowissenschaftliche Gesellschaft" held its Göttingen meeting in Göttingen - as you might have already guessed. This time in its 13th occasion, great neuroscience from all over the world was sponsored, with remarkable plenary lectures on soccer/football, consciousness, smart birds, stunning bats and time machines. Somewhat out of season for us, we only had a very interesting poster on epigenetic regulation of forebrain oligodendrocyte development presented by Eman Abbas.
2018-12-12
Christmas party 2018-second helping
Enjoy!
2018-12-12
Christmas party 2018
As our ninth year in Göttingen comes to an end, several pleasant traditions have evolved, one of these being our Christmas party. This year we warmed up at the Bowling center that usually sees relaxed Neuroanatomy members that play for fun in the first place. Everybody scored! Afterwards, of course, everybody was hungry, so the carnivor orgy at the restaurant "Argentina Steakhouse" came in handy. Keep your spirits up, guys!
2018-11-28
A new doctor has been born
After a quite prolonged "pregnancy" and some hard episodes during "delivery", a new doctor (med. dent.) has been send into the world of wisdom. May the exciting memories on barrel cortex and somatostatin neurons (as well as on all team members and especially her invaluable supervisor Mirko Witte) outlast all the dull cavity filling that lies ahead now!Congratulations and all the best for Tatjana!
2018-11-16
GoeVIP 18 goes to Nguyen et al.
The latest selection of an outstanding paper in basic science authored by members of the UMG sponsored a recent publication of the Institute for Neuroanatomy, originating from Tran Tuoc's research group. It is entitled "Epigenetic Regulation by BAF Complexes Limits Neural Stem Cell Proliferation by Suppressing Wnt Signaling in Late Embryonic Development" and appeared in Stem Cell Reports. Cobgratulations to everybody involved in this project!http://www.med.uni-goettingen.de/de/media/GoeVIP_18_Tran_Tuoc.pdf
2018-11-08
Barrels 31 and Neuroscience 2018 was surely worth the trip
As every year, a small and a big world neuroscience conference took place right after each other. This Year Barrels 31 was held at the UC Riverside. Some 90 participants enjoyed science, lively discussions, lots of good food and the Californian sun. And not to forget Georg's talk! After re-locating to San Diego, some 28.000 neuroscientist enjoyed (despite all the bad overprized food) a conference that always is offering everything you want to hear. Georg's poster was a real success (it attracted some 80-100 people I guess) and also our Minisymposium on Cortical cell type classification was unanimously praised by the audience - and yes, it was excellent science that was delivered by the 6 speakers. Let's do it again at Uncle Sam next year in Chicago.
2018-10-12
Petilla comes to Copenhagen
What is a cell type? How to classify them? How to name them? Can we access their function?If you are interested in these kinds of basic questions, then Copenhagen was the place to be during the last few days. Ed Lein and Rafa Yuste organized a terrific Brain Conference at the beautiful Moltke Palais, which hosted some 100 people of many different fields, all eager to work towards answering the above questions. Sparked by the fanstastic progress of single cell transcriptomics, the question that was in Petilla "Can we classify cortical neurons" has now turned into "How can we reasonably do it". The panel discussion showed the many issues still to be solved but in my opinion, this is just a matter of time.
2018-09-30
113th meeting of the Anatomical Society in Rostock
This is Marko, not Mirko!Whereas Mirko gave an instructive presentation on transgenic animal research, Marko was one of the stars on the same day, when we had a boat trip to Guido Dehnhard's research station, close to Warnemünde. Usually Marko helps the scientists to unravel how the vibrissae help to find fish or to orient in unsteady envrionments. But this day Marko was simply spoiled with lots of fish to let some 100 anatomists pad him.
Altogether, it was an interesting and well-organized meeting and we can conclude that Anatomy is doing well in Germany and beyond.
2018-08-23
Business trip 2018
OOPS, we did it again!Yesterday 16 people crazy for canoeing and other fun stuff drove to Northeim. First we had a very civilized trip on the Rhume (and the winner was ...;-), then we cooled us down with lot's of ice cream in the lovely timber-framed city center (and the winner was .... ;;-), followed by a minigolf competition (where of course the winner was ..... ;;;-). For all of us who did not have enough (food), the restaurant at the Burg Plesse provided us with big plates and plenty of drinks (with no competition :-(
Thanks to all organizers - and, of course, we will do it again :-)
2018-07-18
New Lab Opening Party
After a thorough renovation, our nicest lab was re-opened with a barbecue party. This was also a great opportunity to congratulate our birthday children that were supplied with phenomenal cake from our fantastic cake baking team. Thanks to everybody involved!
2018-06-25
EMBO meeting on Interneurons
Every 3 years a group of interneuron lovers meets on the beautiful island of Mallorca to communicate the progress achieved on this exciting class of neurons. Their development, their circuit features and their functions all become more and more clear. This became obvious in the keynote lecture on GABAergic projection neurons but also in lectures on transcriptomic cell types (we are at 14 types of VIP neurons!) and on neuropeptide-mediated plasticity. Georg's poster on intersectional Rabies tracing of parvalbumin neurons was well received, too.Thanks are due to Oscar Marin and the other organizers for bringing exciting science to a marvelous place.
2018-05-29
Barrels and beyond 2018 delivers excellent science to Göttingen
On May 24th and 25th, the conference "Barrels and beyond 2018" attracted some 90 participants to the MPI for Experimental Medicine. This conference was sponsored by the CRC 889 (Cellular mechanisms of sensory processing), CNMPB and GGNB, and also followed the tradition of meetings organized by the research unit BaCoFun. All talks were simply great, with the plenary lectures really being outstanding. Vivid discussions and plenty of food (and drinks) rounded up this remarkable meeting. A big thanks to all involved helping hands! Let's hope to continue this series in 2 years in Amsterdam, Zürich or Lausanne and in 4 years again in Göttingen.
2018-04-30
Successful thesis defense
With her excellent thesis defense and the wonderful convocation ceremony, the smoothing and polishing of another scientific gem was finally accomplished. The Spanish bull head certainly captures well some of the virtues that were necessary on the way. Thanks are due to Robin, Mirko and Kamila, as well as the many others that helped making this happening.
2018-04-03
Triple achieved!
This is no April's joke, After 2 extensive reviews on epigenetic mechanisms of neural development, Tran Tuoc and his group has just gotten provisionally accepted a manuscript in Stem Cell Reports. Here they report on BAF interaction with Wnt signaling in late embryonic development of cerebal cortex. Stay tuned for the publication list update!
2018-03-20
New Publication
The first publication in 2018 is out!Thanks to meticulous reading and writing by Godwin and Eman, scientists can now access basically everything that is known about transcriptional and epigenetic control of mammalian olfactory epithelium development.
Congratulations!
2018-02-15
Update on Conferences
Please note that there is a final program for the Barrels and Beyond conference now available. Please checkIt has a terrific speaker list and will be certainly worth participating in. Registration deadline is 01.03.2018.
Also the EMBO workshop on Interneurons has announced its speakers list. Please check
Finally, it is worth mentioning that this years Barrels meeting (31!) will take place at UC Riverside, just preceding the SfN meeting in San Diego. There a minisymposium will be organized by Stacy Sorensen and Jochen Staiger on cortical cell type classification featuring (amongst others) Marcel Oberländer, Javier DeFelipe and Bernardo Rudy.
See you there!
2018-01-31
Successful thesis defense
On January 17th, Jürgen Delchmann successfully defended his MD thesis entitled "Elektrophysiologische Charakterisierung GABA-Rezeptor vermittelter Inhibition an Martinotti-Zellen im somatosensorischen Kortex". Directly supervised by Mirko Witte, he achieved important insights about inhibitory modulation of Martinotti cells by postsynaptic GABA-A- and presynaptic GABA-B-receptors.Congratulations, Jürgen - and many thanks to everybody who contributed to the celebration!
2018-01-18
Christiaan P. J. de Kock, a* Heiko J. Luhmann b* and Miguel Maravall c*aVU Amsterdam, Integrative Neurophysiology, De Boelelaan 1085, Amsterdam, The Netherlandsb Univ Med Center, Institute of Physiology, Duesbergweg 6, Mainz, Germanyc University of Sussex, School of Life Sciences, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QG, UK
Barrel Cortex Function - Special Issue in NEUROSCIENCE
Please check out this very comprehensive issue!Barrel Cortex Function Special Issue Editorial
Sensorimotor circuits allow the coordination of sensoryinformation and motor behavior and are pivotal tosurvival in challenging and dynamic environments. Toorchestrate a broad spectrum of possible outcomes,sensorimotor circuits consist of intricate networks ofmany different sensory, motor and associative(sub)cortical regions and include complicated wiringschemes and extensive flow charts. Understanding theorganizational principles of the underlying brain circuitryfrom synapses to cell types and from microcircuits tocomplex networks and behavior would be a majorachievement.The primary somatosensory (or: barrel) cortex ofrodents is widely used for studying molecular, cellularand circuit mechanisms underlying sensory-guidedbehavior. This system encodes tactile stimuli acquiredby the large facial whiskers located on the snout of theanimals. The conscious perception of tactile stimuli isalso highly relevant in the daily life of humans whenperforming fine-grained motor behavior, objectrecognition or social interactions, although we mainlyuse receptors on the finger tips. Especially for therehabilitation of stroke or amputees, the manifoldaspects of somatosensory transduction and processinghave to be better understood to translate them intobetter therapy.In 2016, the 3rd in a series of bi-annual meetings onsensory cortical circuits – with an emphasis on thebarrel cortex – was organized by Fritjof Helmchen,Jochen Staiger, Heiko Luhmann and Christiaan de Kockin Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam) and brought togetherexperts on cortical circuitry, behavior and related topics.This meeting series was prompted by a successfulinternational collaborative consortium, Research Unit1341 on Barrel Cortex Function (BA-CO-FUN), begun in2010 and supported by the German and Swiss nationalresearch science foundations (DFG-SNF). Amsterdam2016 followed meetings in 2012 (Barcelona FENSsatellite) and 2014 (Go¨ ttingen), was attended by over160 participants, and featured sessions on‘‘Development”, ‘‘Inhibition”, ‘‘Linking Circuits toBehavior” and ‘‘Active Somatosensation”. Initialdiscussions on this special issue in NEUROSCIENCEemerged during the Amsterdam 2016 meeting, fueledby inspiring presentations from both senior and juniorscientists. It was felt that the time was ripe for a widerangingreview of the field, along thematic lines similarto those represented at the meeting. Contributions tothis special issue feature several speakers from themeeting, as well as the work of experts not directlyrelated to the BA-CO-FUN meetings or consortium.In short, we bring together a series of manuscripts ontopics that continue to be at the center of interest of theconsortium and associated meetings: the first section(‘‘Barrel Cortex Function”) features work from Stu¨ ttgenand Schwarz (2018), Fox (2018), Argaman and Golomb(2018), Kwon et al. (2018), Helmchen et al. (2018), Baleand Maravall (2018), and Estebanez et al. (2018) on organizationalprinciples of (predominantly) barrel cortex. The second section (‘‘Sensory Periphery”) features manuscriptsfrom Campagner et al. (2018) and Takatoh et al.(2018) on the sensory organ of the somatosensory system:the whiskers and sensory afferents. The third section(‘‘Cortical Inhibition”) is on the structure and function ofinhibitory components of barrel circuits with contributionsfrom Hu and Vervaeke (2018), and Feldmeyer et al.(2018) The fourth section is dedicated to ‘‘Linking Circuitsto Behavior” with manuscripts from McElvain et al. (2018),Guest et al. (2018), Higashikubo and Moore (2018),Auffret et al. (2018), Sabri and Arabzadeh (2018),Schäfer and Hoebeek (2018), and Mohan et al. (2018).The special issue concludes with a section on changesobserved in sensory circuits during development or as aresult of neuronal activity (‘‘Development & Plasticity”)with contributions from Martini et al. (2018), Luhmannand Khazipov (2018), Jamann et al. (2018), and Papaleand Hooks (2018).
2017-12-17
Christmas Celebration 2017
On an awfully rainy Wednesday the Institute went to the restaurant "Lockemann" in Herberhausen, unfortunately by car and bus, instead of hiking there. Well, the trip was worth it. Excellent German (!) cuisine and good company, together made up a very pleasant evening. One more week to go until a Merry Christmas.
2017-11-17
Neuroscience 2017
The big meeting is over. It was a kind of trance. 30000 people, 13000 posters and innumerable lectures. The future of neuroscience happens, everyday, somewhere in world - most often in the US. HBP pushed them. They show us how to do it. BRAIN is now also B.I.C.C.C.Well, it is fun to be a German neuroscientist/neuroanatomist anyway. Especially when your (Alvar's) poster is so well received. VIP neurons in any form and at any level of detail, people like it.
2017-11-13
Barrels 30 in Baltimore was a big success
On November 8th and 9th roughly 110 scientists and barrel afficionados met at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore to report on recent findings in structure and function of the whisker-to-barrel (and beyond) system. In the first session chaired by Jochen Staiger, Alvar Prönneke gave an excellent talk on his current state of understanding of VIP interneurons. Also Xiaolong Jiang, Hillel Adesnik and Bernardo Rudy had excellent contributions to this session. We also honored Tom Woolsey for the discovery of the Barrel cortex and starting (with Dan Siimons) this meeting, which goes on now since 30 years!
2017-09-15
New Publication
It is the final reward for Xiaojuan after a long struggle to comprehensively survey synapses formed by VIP-expressing GABAergic boutons through a combination of pre-embedding YFP-staining and post-embedding GABA-immunogold labeling. Much to our own surprise at most some 37% of a subcellular target structure is formed by GABAergic neurons, thus, as a population the VIP cells can not be interneuron-specific interneurons. Please check out Cerebral Cortex for
2017-09-05
Business trip 2017 - reprise
It is more about the picture than anything else ... . 17 scientists from 9 different countries standing in front of the Witzenhausen green house to see coffee, cocoa, papaya, stevia, banana, and and and. Not to forget calabasses. That really worked for us.
2017-09-03
Memorial symposium for Michael Frotscher
Some 100 friends and colleagues gathered on Friday, September, 1st, in Hamburg to hold a memorial symposium for Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Michael Frotscher, who suddenly died in May this year. What has been planned to be a symposium on the occasion of his 70th birthday sadly had to be renamed but nevertheless took place to show the appreciation and to express the gratitude of many former colleagues, friends and co-workers to this exceptional scientist.
2017-08-25
Business trip 2017
No joke - our business trip this year led us to the small but very beautiful city "Witzenhausen" being located in North-Hesse. It held a lot of pleasant surprises for us. A green house of the University of Kassel with lots of exciting plants. A microbrewery with (basically) unlimited lager to test. A very relaxed Café (Ringelnatz), with a pleasant athmosphere. For the brave ones, a jump into the green lake and some home-made tarte flambée rounded up a perfect day.Thanks are due to the organizers for doing a great job!
2017-08-07
Review paper published
Epigenetics is a field of ever increasing importance, not only for neural development but also for the understanding of many different diseases. Probably that's why the paper by Sokpor et al. in Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience has already been viewed more than 500 times in the first few days.Congratulations!
2017-08-02
Manuscript accepted at Cerebral Cortex
Cerebral Cortex, which seems to have become our "home journal", has just accepted a manuscript with Xiaojuan Zhou as first author. It is entitled Subcellular targeting of VIP boutons in mouse barrel cortex is layer-dependent and not restricted to interneuronsCongratulations to everybody involved!
2017-07-20
Paper published
A fruitful collaboration has come to a fruitful end. The paper on the regulation of connectivity of OLM cells in the hippocampus by TRPV1 has just appeared at Nature Communications. Check out if you are interested in another example of GABAergic interneuron specificity:
2017-07-12
Paper published
We are very happy to announce that the review in Frontiers in Neuroanatomy has now been published and made available to the entire scientific community. Being reviewed by two eminent scientists in the field, it feels even better that it was well received by them and hopefully this will hold true for the rest of the readership, despite its provocative content.
2017-06-21
Manuscript accepted at Frontiers
We are happy to announce that a review paper has just been accepted at Frontiers in Neuroanatomy. This insightful piece of science is part of a themed issue on cortical layersIronically, Julien has clearly argued why layers as such (probably) have no function. Let's see how the community will appreciate it.
2017-06-06
New Publication
As the "Facebook for Scientists" (i.e. Research Gate ;-) already let me know during the weekend, our new review on GABAergic interneurons is availble online and read by many people. Please check out the following link if you are interested:
2017-05-24
SAVE the DATE for Barrels & Beyond
In one year from now, May 24/25 2018, we will host another conference on cortical function here in Göttingen, sponsored by the SFB 889. There will be several sessions on barrel cortex and beyond, covering all hot topics of current research. Confirmed speakers so far are Massimo Scanziani, Michael Brecht, Natalie Rochefort, Alison Barth and Solange Brown. Watch out for further information!
2017-05-15
Manuscript accepted at Neuroscience
I am happy to announce that a collaborative review on GABAergic interneurons (with Dirk Feldmeyer and colleagues) has just been accepted at Neuroscience. It will be part of a Special Issue "S1: Barrel Cortex", edited by Heiko Luhmann, Miguel Maravall and Christiaan der Kock. Looking very much forward to seeing it printed!
2017-03-27
Manuscript accepted at Nature Communications
Are hippocampal Martinotti cells different? At least in the manuscript of Hurtdo-Zavala et al., entitled
TRPV1 regulates excitatory innervation of OLM neurons in the hippocampus
we helped to show Camin Dean's group that they display interesting molecular and circuit mechanisms that so far haven't been detected in the neocortex.
2017-03-21
German Neuroscience Meeting starts tomorrow
The bi-annual German Neuroscience Meeting, always happening in Göttingen, starts tomorrow!Please check out the web site for further information;
We are looking very much forward to present our posters to colleagues from all over Germany but also from the rest of Europe. Welcome to Göttingen, friends.
2017-03-02
Press release by the UMC
A press release by the University Medical center features our recent Nature Communications publication. If you like to learn how our results can be explained to a broader audience, please check
2017-02-17
Successful grant applications!
Dr. Tran Tuoc just has been granted a project entitled „Chromatin and epigenetic regulation in neuronal migration“ by the Board of Schram-Stiftung. Congratulations!With this achievement he is also invited to speak at the symposium, presenting all grant winner:
http://schram-stiftung.de/pdf/schram_symposium_2017_poster_abstract_programm.pdf
2017-01-31
First publication in 2017
Mirko contributed to an interesting publication in Nature Medicine. Congratulations!If you want to learn about VIP neurons in addiction and schizophrenia, please check out
2016-12-21
Christmas celebration 2016
No pictures but anyway big fun! Maybe we were just too busy with the good food at the restaurant "Abessina" or too baffled about all the more or less beautiful presents that were unveiled during our "Wichtel event". So, it was a perfect wrap-up of a nice and successful year in the lab.
2016-10-24
Manuscript accepted at Nature Communications
HURRAY!After a 13 months delivery period our latest scientific baby has been born,
named:
Parvalbumin- and Vasoactive intestinal polypeptide -expressing
neocortical interneurons impose differential inhibition on Martinotti
cells
It was brought to light at Nat Comm. A special thanks to Mirko and Martinfor making it happen!
2016-10-11
New Publication
That was fast now! PLOS already published our study, which is Open Access of course.RESEARCH ARTICLE
Morphological Characteristics of Electrophysiologically Characterized Layer Vb Pyramidal Cells in Rat Barrel CortexPLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0164004 October 5, 2016
2016-09-28
Manuscript accepted at PLoS ONE
A cumbersome submission and review process has come to an end after ca. 13 months! We just got accepted with a manuscript whose data was still from the "rat age" which has been terminated in Göttingen for us.PONE-D-15-41037R3
Morphological characteristics of electrophysiologically characterized layer Vb pyramidal cells in rat barrel cortex
2016-09-26
The Anatomische Gesellschaft conference was a big success
From Tuesday 20th to Saturday 24th of September the 111th meeting of the Anatomische Gesellschaft took place at the Center of Anatomy of the UMG. With roughly 400 participants it was more than a big success, it was a record breaker. From an Institute for Neuroanatomy perspective the most exciting happenings were the Anatomy Slam at the Lumiere, where Georg Hafner was the secret winner. Well done, Georg!The preconference workshop on teaching saw Mirko Witte giving his peers an insightful time, when he used the latest tricks in didactics to teach the teachers on the subject of voluntary movements. Thanks for a great lecture, Mirko.
On Saturday, Julien Guy gave a wonderful talk to show the fascinated colleagues that the first-ever two-photon-targeted patch-clamp recordings at German anatomical institutes happened in our lab. Thanks for keeping the faith, Julien!
And last but not least, Alvar Prönneke's Cerebral Cortex paper was elected "Paper of the Year" by the members of the Anatomische Gesellschaft. Congratulations, Alvar!
2016-09-15
Anatomy Slam and Conference
Next week two remarkable premieres will take place in Göttingen, in which the Institute for Neuroanatomy participates.On Tuesday, 20.09, the first Anatomy Slam is going to happen at the cinema Lumière. For details see press release:
From Wednesday to Saturday, the 111th meeting of the Anatomical Society will be hosted by the Center of Anatomy of the University Medicine Göttingen. Highlights from the neuroscience perspective will be the keynote lectures by Tobias Moser and Moritz Helmstädter. For details see full program:
http://anatomische-gesellschaft.de/a4/landing/index.html#Program
2016-09-11
New Publication
After a very long delay, caused by the sluggish response of Jiang et al., in the latest issue of Science our technical comment finally appeared. It is a community response spearheaded by Ed Callaway, Bernardo Rudy and Jochen Staiger that aims at showing the limitations of Jiang et al.'s work as published last year in Science.http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6304/1108.1
2016-09-10
http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.1006274
New publication
Christina, Huong, Joachim et al about BAF complexes in olfactory epithelium neurogenesis is online´ed in Plos Genetics.http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.1006274
2016-08-29
Manuscript accepted at Cerebral Cortex
After a tough but very fair review process, we got accepted at Cerebral Cortex with the second manuscript originating from Julien's PhD thesis. Congratulations!Thalamic input to clusters of layer 4 fated neurons in the reeler somatosensory cortex is monosynaptic but weaker than in wild-type.
Julien Guy, Alexandra Sachkova, Martin Möck, Mirko Witte, Robin J. Wagener, Jochen F.Staiger, Institut für Neuroanatomie
2016-08-22
New Publication
After an extensive review period, a joint manuscript with the Stieglitz-Lab at the IMTEK in Freiburg was successfully published in Biomed Microdevices. Well done Christina and Julien!Please check out:
Biomed Microdevices (2016) 18:81
DOI 10.1007/s10544-016-0106-7Intracortical polyimide electrodes with a bioresorbable coating
Christina Hassler1,2 & Julien Guy2,3 & Max Nietzschmann1,2 & Dennis T.T. Plachta1,4 &Jochen F. Staiger2,3 & Thomas Stieglitz1,2,5
2016-08-12
Another cover picture
As a reward for stunning images, our recent publication Wagener et al. also made it on the cover of the June issue of Cerebral Cortex. Please check out and enjoy!
2016-08-09
New website for the Barrels community
To ease the spread of information and interaction between contributing labs, the organizing committee of the BARRELS conferences (longest standing SfN Satellite meeting) has launched a new website. Please visit for the latest information on the upcoming meeting in Los Angeles November 10-11, 2016.http://www.vibrissa.org/
2016-06-27
Work outing - Betriebsausflug 2016
We are the lucky ones ..., in the middle of a rain and thunderstorm period, again, we have chosen the nicest day of the week to go climbing, do culture and heavy eating - all on one day! We visited a climbing park in the Habichtswald and the world heritage spot Kassel-Herkules Bergpark to see the fantastic Water festivals. It felt like a great trip to all participants thanks to the great organization of Mirko!
2016-06-21
DenkBAR - A public awareness event
At the pleasant location of the bar Apex, presented by the Kulturverein APEX, the CNMPB (Center for Nanoscale Microscopy and Molecular Physiology of the Brain; moderator: Heike Conradt) presented a public awareness event, in which Jochen Staiger and Sebastian Kügler talked about viral vectors as the new supertools in neuroscience. Despite strong competition with the European football championships the event was well visited and the audience was discussing lively on the many facets that were presented during the 2 talks.DenkBAR: „Viren machen nicht nur krank: (un)heimliche Helfer in der Hirnforschung“
2016-05-30
Barrel Conference 2016
The Barrels/BaCoFun Conference recently held in Amsterdam was a big success. More than 160 participants from more than 40 labs heard the latest on all kinds of cortical physiology, function but also anatomy and development. A very hot topic was VIP interneurons and their role in sensory-guided behaviors.For more information and photos see
http://barrelcortexfunction2016.com/images.html
2016-03-22
New publication
An "Extra view" by Huang et al. on epigenetic regulation by BAF complexes was published online at Cell Cycle.
Please check: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15384101.2016.1160984
2016-01-28
BigNeuron Project
BigNeuron hackathon at ICL LondonJob Offerings:
2021-08-13
Student assistant wanted
Studentische Hilfskraft (m/w/d)
Wir suchen ab sofort eine/n Mitarbeiter/in (mindestens 40 h/Monat) für die Rekonstruktion von neuronalen Schaltkreisen mit Hilfe der Lichtmikroskopie und einer Spezialsoftware (Neurolucida).
Ihre Aufgaben umfassen:
Nutzung der Software Neurolucida, um quantitativ und dreidimensional Nervenzellen zu rekonstruieren, die mit einem Farbstoff gefüllt wurden und mit konfokaler Mikroskopie hochauflösend gescannt wurde. In einem Schnitt können bis zu 4 solcher Nervenzellen vorliegen.
Ihr Profil sollte sein:
Immatrikulation in einem medizinischen oder naturwissenschaftlichen Studiengang. Die Voraussetzungen sind Freude am mikroskopischen Arbeiten, dreidimensionales Vorstellungsvermögen und gute PC-Kenntnisse (Windows). Wegen der langen Einlernphase ist außerdem ein möglichst langfristiges Engagement gewünscht (mindestens 1 Jahr).
Wir bieten:
Flexible Arbeitsbedingungen, eine gute Geräteausstattung und die Integration in ein junges und dynamisches Team, in dem Fortbildung und Kollegialität einen hohen Stellenwert haben. Direkter Kontakt mit international anerkannter Neurowissenschaft und Mitarbeit in einem spannenden Drittmittel-geförderten Projekt.
Bitte kontaktieren Sie:
Prof. Dr. Jochen Staiger
Universitätsmedizin Göttingen
Zentrum Anatomie
Institut für Neuroanatomie
Kreuzbergring 36
D-37075 Göttingen
Tel. +49-551-39-7051
Fax +49-551-39-14016
http://www.neuroanatomie.uni-goettingen.de/
jochen.staiger@med.uni-goettingen.de
2021-08-06
Job offer: EM technician
Technische/r Angestellte/r in der Elektronenmikroskopie (m/w/d)
Wir suchen zum 01.10.2021 eine/n Mitarbeiter/in (0,5 – halbtags) für die Erforschung von neuronalen Schaltkreisen mit Hilfe der Elektronenmikroskopie.
Ihre Aufgaben umfassen:
Histochemische und immunhistochemische Färbungen, Probeneinbettung in verschiedene Medien, Ultramikrotomie (inklusive Serienschnitte) und professionelle Bedienung eines Transmissionselektronenmikroskops. Erfahrungen mit „postembedding-Immunogold-Färbungen“ sind von Vorteil. Eine Einarbeitung in die Rasterelektronenmikroskopie zum Imaging von Semidünnschnitten mittels „backscattered electrons“ ist vorgesehen.
Ihr Profil sollte sein:
Abgeschlossene Ausbildung zur/zum technischen Assistenten/Assistentin und/oder einschlägige Berufserfahrung.
Wir bieten:
Flexible Arbeitsbedingungen, eine gute Geräteausstattung und die Integration in ein junges und dynamisches Team, in dem Fortbildung und Kollegialität einen hohen Stellenwert haben.
Bitte kontaktieren Sie:
Prof. Dr. Jochen Staiger
Universitätsmedizin Göttingen
Zentrum Anatomie
Institut für Neuroanatomie
Kreuzbergring 36
D-37075 Göttingen
Tel. +49-551-39-7051
Fax +49-551-39-14016
http://www.neuroanatomie.uni-goettingen.de/
jochen.staiger@med.uni-goettingen.de
2017-08-01
Free PhD student position
Topic: Functional analysis of synaptic networks formed by cortical GABAergic interneurons
In the project we will analyze the inhibitory circuitry within the columnar structure of the somatosensory (barrel) cortex. GABA-releasing interneurons play a central role in different aspects of cortical information processing. We will use a broad spectrum of electrophysiological, histochemical and microscopic methods. The core methods are paired whole-cell patch-clamp recording, optogenetic stimulation and mapping of synaptic inputs of interneurons in acute brain slices. Afterwards the neurons will be stained and quantitatively reconstructed in 3D (see Walker et al., Nature Communications 2016; Proenneke et al., Cereb. Cortex 2015).
2017-07-01
Student Assistant for single cell reconstruction
We offer a position as a student assistant (10h or 20 h per week) to contribute to a DFG funded research project dealing with the classification of cortical neurons (De Felipe et al., Nature Reviews Neuroscience 2013). Your obligation is to reconstruct dye-filled neurons that were electrophysiologically characterized. For this purpose we use the software “Neurolucida”. Requirements are (i) a dedication to working at a microscope, (ii) three-dimensional thinking and (iii) computer knowledge (Windows). We prefer long-term commitments due to the rather long learning period.
MD-Projects:
2020-01-01
Schwerpunkt 5
Nachweis von GABAb-Rezeptoren auf GABAergen Interneurone im somatosensorischen Kortex mittels HybridisierungstechnikenTechniken:
- Fluoreszenz-in-situ-Hybridisierung/ Hairpin-Chain-Reactionan Hirnschnitten
- Mikroskopische Auswertung: Erstellen von virtuellen Schnitten und Zellzählung
- statistische Auswertung mit Statistica und SPSS
- Bildbearbeitung mit Adobe Photoshop
Dauer: 6-9 Monate
2020-01-01
Techniken:
Schwerpunkt 2
Nachweis der elektrophysiologischen Wirkung der Neuromodulatoren ACh, NA und Serotonin auf GABAerge Interneuronen im somatosensorischen KortexTechniken:
- Herstellen von akuten Hirnschnitten von Mäusen
- in vitro Patch-Clamp Ableitungen
- Pharmakologische Untersuchungen
- Aufnahme und Auswertung von elektrophysiologischen Daten mit CED Signal
- statistische Auswertung mit Sigma Plot und Statistica
- Bildbearbeitung mit Adobe-Programmen
Dauer: 6-9 Monate
2020-01-01
Techniken:
Dauer 6-9 Monate
Schwerpunkt 1
Schichtenspezifische Charakterisierung von Parvalbumin-exprimierenden Neuronen im somatosensorischen Kortex mittels Flip/Cre-MäusenTechniken:
- Perfusion von Mäusen
- Immunhistochemische Färbetechniken und Fluoreszenz In-Situ Hybridisierung von je 2-3 Schnitten von 4 Tieren
- Mikroskopische Auswertung: Erstellen von virtuellen Schnitten und Zellzählung
- statistische Auswertung mit Statistica und SPSS
- Bildbearbeitung mit Adobe Photoshop
Dauer 6-9 Monate
Master/Bachelor Projects:
2020-01-01