Mark Brandon, PhD.

Now published @Nature, we used miniscopes to study the thalamic head direction system during drift and reorientation. Paper: nature.com/articles/s4158… Summary: douglas.research.mcgill.ca/news/research-… There’s a lot in the paper, but my favorite piece to share/highlight is in figure 2:

#MayThe4th be with you! Meet FORCE1s, a new positive‑going, ultrasensitive voltage indicator. Optimized for 2P imaging at slower acquisition speeds, FORCE1s is easy to use on almost any microscope. Bonus: it even powers 2P miniscope experiments!📄Preprint: biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

computational neuroscience has always known that real computation is spatial, temporal, and deeply non-linear. but for 30 years, simulating that reality meant relying on CPU-bound, non-differentiable tools. we built the engine to break that bottleneck.

Sharing the latest from the lab. Led by Yunlong Liu, this work explores how microglia and engram neurons interact during fear extinction in the hippocampus. rdcu.be/fgNH7

🧵 Our new review is out in @AnnualReviews of Neuroscience. We examine path integration in Alzheimer’s disease and ask what early navigational changes can reveal about the underlying brain circuits. Co-first-authored with Misun Kim and senior-authored by @NeilBurgess10 /1

New preprint from our lab on 3‑photon microscopy with deep, fast, Ca-imaiging on a large field of view. It started with @a_negrean and @tgeiller and was led by an outstanding student, Tiberiu Mihaila, with major collaboration with @DarcyPeterka. biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

Functional neuromics in 3D... honored to be part of this team!

This is really incredible work, and opens up so many possibilities! Congrats @attila_losonczy @jason_hyun_yong and co-authors!

Excited about this project combining 2-photon imaging & spatial transcriptomics: biorxiv.org/content/10.648… Lead scientist: @jason_hc_yong Collaborator: @erdem___varol Video: memorylongevity.org Website: memorylongevity.org/merscope-regis…

The Lippi lab is hiring a postdoctoral associate! We built new technologies to study post-transcriptional regulation in the healthy and diseased brain. We are recruiting motivated and talented scientists who will use these tools to discover new biology and new therapies.

New paper out @NatureNeuro! Congrats to @EmilyAeryJones & team! The brain doesn’t just map where you are, it maps where it matters. Entorhinal cortex represents important, distant reward locations. A step toward understanding how experiences are linked across space. rdcu.be/fbcS4

add check out our work in M1. We also see this localized NA release, and the pattern of release actually changes with motor skill learning ;-) biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Second paper from my PhD (co-led by Ravi) is out! cell.com/current-biolog… Using VR in freely moving rats, we studied how our sense of location (place cells) and direction (head‑direction cells) interact to guide successful navigation.

New preprint! Circuit wiring isn’t just anatomy, it shapes computation. Disrupting CA1→subiculum topography reorganizes spatial coding and destabilizes network dynamics. Great collab led by Yanjun Sun, & with D Pederick, X Xu & L Lou! biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

The 3rd Neural Circuits and Behaviour satellite is happening May 18th at @CAN_ACN in beautiful Montreal. Registration is now open (link below). eventbrite.ca/e/neural-circu…

1/8. New preprint! Using fUSi in head-fixed mice🐭, we found that arousal events trigger a brain-wide wave of activity 🌊🧠. Surprisingly, this pattern was preserved during manipulations of the locus coeruleus, pointing to a minor role for noradrenaline. biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

I am excited to share that our paper is now published in Nature Human Behavior! Check it out here: rdcu.be/e6pzS. Thanks to my PI, Katherine Duncan, and to my collaborators for their support on this journey! Stay tuned for an iEEG follow up 🧠

Excited to share this in final form @SfNJournals : An Open-Source Restraint System for Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Awake Rats: eneuro.org/content/13/2/E… If anyone wants to try doing it, give us a call! Happy to help you get going!

This project on 2-color calcium imaging is from the COVID years. Delayed for too long but still useful. You should be able to build this version based on our paper. Some interesting data showing direct pathway neurons activated before indirect pathway neurons for contraversive movements. A dual-color miniature endoscope for calcium imaging in behaving mice biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

Exciting new preprint out led by @JingwenLi18. The paper describes the first recordings of V1 neurons in a freely-moving monkeys and how dynamic active gaze behaviors organize visual input in the real-world. Amazing work from a rising star! biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

New study reveals a previously unseen learning process in the brain’s memory centre, with implications for Alzheimer’s disease 🧠 🔗mcgill.ca/x/5ih @mcgillu | @McGillMed | @CIHR_IRSC | @markbrandonlab