Jake Watson
@jakefwatson.bsky.social
Neurophysiologist @ ISTAustria
Synapses, microcircuits, hippocampus.
Google Scholar: https://bit.ly/jakefwatson
Research summary: www.synapticarrangements.org
Synapses, microcircuits, hippocampus.
Google Scholar: https://bit.ly/jakefwatson
Research summary: www.synapticarrangements.org
Reposted by Jake Watson
🧠🪰 The adult Drosophila brain connectome now gives us a complete wiring diagram of ~140k neurons. But a wiring diagram alone isn’t understanding.
How is this massive network organized?
Our paper tackles that question by mapping community structure across the entire fly brain. 1/
How is this massive network organized?
Our paper tackles that question by mapping community structure across the entire fly brain. 1/
New lab paper - will say more about this in a little while
December 15, 2025 at 3:11 PM
🧠🪰 The adult Drosophila brain connectome now gives us a complete wiring diagram of ~140k neurons. But a wiring diagram alone isn’t understanding.
How is this massive network organized?
Our paper tackles that question by mapping community structure across the entire fly brain. 1/
How is this massive network organized?
Our paper tackles that question by mapping community structure across the entire fly brain. 1/
Great to see it out! Congrats!
December 13, 2025 at 9:01 AM
Great to see it out! Congrats!
Reposted by Jake Watson
🥳Excited to share our latest human multipatch paper, now out in @natneuro.nature.com
🧠 We studied the cellular and synaptic physiology of human L2–3 pyramidal neurons and identified subtype-specific local connectivity rules across individuals.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Join us: penglab.de
🧠 We studied the cellular and synaptic physiology of human L2–3 pyramidal neurons and identified subtype-specific local connectivity rules across individuals.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Join us: penglab.de
December 13, 2025 at 7:59 AM
🥳Excited to share our latest human multipatch paper, now out in @natneuro.nature.com
🧠 We studied the cellular and synaptic physiology of human L2–3 pyramidal neurons and identified subtype-specific local connectivity rules across individuals.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Join us: penglab.de
🧠 We studied the cellular and synaptic physiology of human L2–3 pyramidal neurons and identified subtype-specific local connectivity rules across individuals.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Join us: penglab.de
Reposted by Jake Watson
Structure and organization of AMPA receptor-TARP complexes in the mammalian cerebellum | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Structure and organization of AMPA receptor-TARP complexes in the mammalian cerebellum
AMPA receptors (AMPARs) are multimodal transducers of glutamatergic signals throughout the brain. Their diversity is exemplified in the cerebellum; at afferent synapses, AMPARs mediate high-frequency ...
www.science.org
December 12, 2025 at 5:35 AM
Structure and organization of AMPA receptor-TARP complexes in the mammalian cerebellum | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
And you'll find the preprint explainer here:
Recording synaptic minis (mEPSCs)? We have a new paper trying to better understand how recorded datasets match synaptic changes. In short, they don't..
More info below, and the preprint here:
biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.26.620084v1
More info below, and the preprint here:
biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.26.620084v1
September 29, 2025 at 11:54 AM
And you'll find the preprint explainer here:
Our paper on 'mini analysis' is now published in @jphysiol.bsky.social
If you are recording mPSCs or sPSCs, I hope this helps with analysis. Interpretation of these datasets is not as easy as it seems..!
Happy to discuss if you are interested
physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/...
If you are recording mPSCs or sPSCs, I hope this helps with analysis. Interpretation of these datasets is not as easy as it seems..!
Happy to discuss if you are interested
physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/...
‘Mini analysis’ misrepresents changes in synaptic properties due to incomplete event detection
Abstract figure legend Summary of the study where simulated recordings (left) were used to characterise the effect of incomplete detection on mini (mPSC) analysis. Recording noise levels (red) determ...
physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
September 29, 2025 at 11:54 AM
Our paper on 'mini analysis' is now published in @jphysiol.bsky.social
If you are recording mPSCs or sPSCs, I hope this helps with analysis. Interpretation of these datasets is not as easy as it seems..!
Happy to discuss if you are interested
physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/...
If you are recording mPSCs or sPSCs, I hope this helps with analysis. Interpretation of these datasets is not as easy as it seems..!
Happy to discuss if you are interested
physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/...
Reposted by Jake Watson
Extremely happy to share our lab’s first paper now published in @NatureSMB! We determined the cryo-EM structures of GluA4, both alone and in complex with TARP2, capturing the receptor in different functional states.
New online: GluA4 AMPA receptor gating mechanisms and modulation by auxiliary proteins
GluA4 AMPA receptor gating mechanisms and modulation by auxiliary proteins
Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, Published online: 15 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41594-025-01666-7Vega-Gutiérrez et al. present cryo-electron microscopy structures of GluA4-containing AMPA receptors, which are key for brain signaling. They show GluA4-specific conformations and explain how subunit composition shapes receptor architecture, dynamics and function.
go.nature.com
September 15, 2025 at 11:03 AM
Extremely happy to share our lab’s first paper now published in @NatureSMB! We determined the cryo-EM structures of GluA4, both alone and in complex with TARP2, capturing the receptor in different functional states.
Reposted by Jake Watson
Finding correlates of the same signal in different brain areas is not evidence against specialisation, it is evidence for interconnection.
When I flush my toilet, the level in the tank and the flow rate in the supply pipe become perfectly correlated. Yet these toilet areas have distinct functions.
When I flush my toilet, the level in the tank and the flow rate in the supply pipe become perfectly correlated. Yet these toilet areas have distinct functions.
Sad day for peope who still believe brain areas are the primary organizational units of function in the brain.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A brain-wide map of neural activity during complex behaviour - Nature
The International Brain Laboratory presents a brain-wide electrophysiological map obtained from pooling data from 12 laboratories that performed the same standardized perceptual decision-making task i...
www.nature.com
September 4, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Finding correlates of the same signal in different brain areas is not evidence against specialisation, it is evidence for interconnection.
When I flush my toilet, the level in the tank and the flow rate in the supply pipe become perfectly correlated. Yet these toilet areas have distinct functions.
When I flush my toilet, the level in the tank and the flow rate in the supply pipe become perfectly correlated. Yet these toilet areas have distinct functions.
Reposted by Jake Watson
Are you passionate about advancing cutting-edge imaging technologies, and combine expansion microscopy with the power of AI@HHMI to unlock new biological discoveries? If you’re ready for a creative,and impactful journey, we’d love for you to apply!
hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...
hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...
Research Specialist - Expansion Microscopy
Primary Work Address: 19700 Helix Drive, Ashburn, VA, 20147 Current HHMI Employees, click here to apply via your Workday account. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus is a pio...
hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com
August 20, 2025 at 2:59 PM
Are you passionate about advancing cutting-edge imaging technologies, and combine expansion microscopy with the power of AI@HHMI to unlock new biological discoveries? If you’re ready for a creative,and impactful journey, we’d love for you to apply!
hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...
hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...
Hi Pablo - if you still need the info, this pattern is very nice staining of the mossy fibre tract (DG output). Your protein seems to be specific for granule cell axons!
August 4, 2025 at 12:24 PM
Hi Pablo - if you still need the info, this pattern is very nice staining of the mossy fibre tract (DG output). Your protein seems to be specific for granule cell axons!
Glad you enjoyed it John!
August 3, 2025 at 11:17 AM
Glad you enjoyed it John!
There is a lot more on cell and synaptic properties in the full paper, but this data adds to the emerging picture of heterogeneous excitatory neurons... many interesting cell and circuit features can be revealed only by diving into the (often complex and confusing) heterogeneity of the brain!
August 2, 2025 at 2:25 PM
There is a lot more on cell and synaptic properties in the full paper, but this data adds to the emerging picture of heterogeneous excitatory neurons... many interesting cell and circuit features can be revealed only by diving into the (often complex and confusing) heterogeneity of the brain!
Inhibitory wiring also had a surprise. Spontaneous GABAergic input was strikingly coincident on PNs of the same subclass, suggesting specific wiring of interneurons into each PN type - for layer-specific control! @zhihaozheng.bsky.social has now visualized this wiring in his beautiful connectomics
August 2, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Inhibitory wiring also had a surprise. Spontaneous GABAergic input was strikingly coincident on PNs of the same subclass, suggesting specific wiring of interneurons into each PN type - for layer-specific control! @zhihaozheng.bsky.social has now visualized this wiring in his beautiful connectomics
Deep and superficial PNs had a surprise in their recurrent connectivity: superficial PNs connect broadly, but deep PNs show little local connectivity back to superficial cells. This suggests that deep PNs form their own subnetwork, perhaps 'associating the associations' made in superficial CA3..
August 2, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Deep and superficial PNs had a surprise in their recurrent connectivity: superficial PNs connect broadly, but deep PNs show little local connectivity back to superficial cells. This suggests that deep PNs form their own subnetwork, perhaps 'associating the associations' made in superficial CA3..
Across the brain, PNs show a lot of heterogeneity. In CA3 it’s clearest on the deep-superficial axis, and we see 'deep bursting' PNs that have been shown before. From hundreds of recorded cells, these are clearly a distinct subclass in our hands, but are not strictly 'athorny' as has been suggested.
August 2, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Across the brain, PNs show a lot of heterogeneity. In CA3 it’s clearest on the deep-superficial axis, and we see 'deep bursting' PNs that have been shown before. From hundreds of recorded cells, these are clearly a distinct subclass in our hands, but are not strictly 'athorny' as has been suggested.
Our work looking into heterogeneous pyramidal neurons (PNs) in hippocampal CA3 is now online @cp-cellreports.bsky.social: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... With a pile of multicellular recordings from mouse CA3, we characterised the recurrent network at the single cell level...
Cell-specific wiring routes information flow through hippocampal CA3
The hippocampus, critical for learning and memory, is dogmatically described as a trisynaptic circuit where dentate gyrus granule cells (GCs), CA3 pyr…
www.sciencedirect.com
August 2, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Our work looking into heterogeneous pyramidal neurons (PNs) in hippocampal CA3 is now online @cp-cellreports.bsky.social: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... With a pile of multicellular recordings from mouse CA3, we characterised the recurrent network at the single cell level...
This may help, depending on your chosen ally: ivaprime.com
IVA Prime
ivaprime.com
July 20, 2025 at 4:06 PM
This may help, depending on your chosen ally: ivaprime.com
If you are interested in a position working on the coolest new developments in connectomics - take a serious look at this. Incredible technology development opportunity, working with a super nice scientist! Check out the paper here if you haven’t seen it yet: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
July 18, 2025 at 1:06 PM
If you are interested in a position working on the coolest new developments in connectomics - take a serious look at this. Incredible technology development opportunity, working with a super nice scientist! Check out the paper here if you haven’t seen it yet: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Really beautiful hippocampal connectomics from @zhihaozheng.bsky.social et al. Such high quality data shows many interesting circuit wiring surprises - an incredible resource to digest! Great also to see the parallels with our physiology work on neuronal heterogeneity
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Connectomic reconstruction from hippocampal CA3 reveals spatially graded mossy fiber inputs and selective feedforward inhibition to pyramidal cells
The mossy fiber (MF) connections to pyramidal cells in hippocampal CA3 are hypothesized to participate in pattern separation and memory encoding, yet no large–scale neuronal wiring diagram exists for ...
www.biorxiv.org
July 15, 2025 at 11:48 AM
Really beautiful hippocampal connectomics from @zhihaozheng.bsky.social et al. Such high quality data shows many interesting circuit wiring surprises - an incredible resource to digest! Great also to see the parallels with our physiology work on neuronal heterogeneity
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Jake Watson
I'm pleased to share our new work, “Spatio-temporal organization of network activity patterns in the hippocampus”, out in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social !
With Demi Brizee & David Dupret, we track how oscillations and spiking behaviour map onto hippocampal layers using an LFP-based embedding.
(1/13)
With Demi Brizee & David Dupret, we track how oscillations and spiking behaviour map onto hippocampal layers using an LFP-based embedding.
(1/13)
June 5, 2025 at 5:10 PM
I'm pleased to share our new work, “Spatio-temporal organization of network activity patterns in the hippocampus”, out in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social !
With Demi Brizee & David Dupret, we track how oscillations and spiking behaviour map onto hippocampal layers using an LFP-based embedding.
(1/13)
With Demi Brizee & David Dupret, we track how oscillations and spiking behaviour map onto hippocampal layers using an LFP-based embedding.
(1/13)
If you are using IVA Cloning for your plasmid work... there is a cool new tool to make primer design very easy: ivaprime.com
The explanation paper is here: academic.oup.com/nar/advance-...
The explanation paper is here: academic.oup.com/nar/advance-...
IVA Prime: automated primer design for in vivo assembly cloning
Abstract. Molecular cloning through in vivo assembly (IVA) is an efficient homology-based approach that can achieve complex cloning operations in a single
academic.oup.com
May 9, 2025 at 8:40 AM
If you are using IVA Cloning for your plasmid work... there is a cool new tool to make primer design very easy: ivaprime.com
The explanation paper is here: academic.oup.com/nar/advance-...
The explanation paper is here: academic.oup.com/nar/advance-...
Incredibly impressive and powerful new method - connectomics with light microscopy! Congrats @mojtabart.bsky.social, Hans Danzl and team @istaresearch.bsky.social ! It works incredibly well - we will keep using this magic, and recommend you do too!
Light-microscopy-based connectomic reconstruction of mammalian brain tissue - Nature
A technique called LICONN (light-microscopy-based connectomics) allows mapping of brain tissue at synapse level and simultaneous measurement of molecular information, thus enabling quantification of c...
www.nature.com
May 8, 2025 at 3:43 PM
Incredibly impressive and powerful new method - connectomics with light microscopy! Congrats @mojtabart.bsky.social, Hans Danzl and team @istaresearch.bsky.social ! It works incredibly well - we will keep using this magic, and recommend you do too!
Reposted by Jake Watson
Given all that is going on consider this quote from Bertram Russell's 1930 book The conquest of Happiness:
“The man who can be interested in the structure of atoms or the way in which a beetle navigates, is likely to get a joy in life which no amount of success in the pursuit of power can give. ”
“The man who can be interested in the structure of atoms or the way in which a beetle navigates, is likely to get a joy in life which no amount of success in the pursuit of power can give. ”
May 3, 2025 at 9:42 AM
Given all that is going on consider this quote from Bertram Russell's 1930 book The conquest of Happiness:
“The man who can be interested in the structure of atoms or the way in which a beetle navigates, is likely to get a joy in life which no amount of success in the pursuit of power can give. ”
“The man who can be interested in the structure of atoms or the way in which a beetle navigates, is likely to get a joy in life which no amount of success in the pursuit of power can give. ”
..and it is not every meeting that your first task for the day is trying to keep up with Brazilian football on the beach!
We are on for #Day4 at the #Neural Mechanisms of #cognitive Function at Pipa, Brazil 🇧🇷
Respecting local tradition the first session was ⚽️ 🏖️🏆🥇
Great to play with @melgaby.bsky.social after 8 years! (of course he’s as competitive as ever 😅)
@jakefwatson.bsky.social @tristan-geiller.bsky.social ⭐️
Respecting local tradition the first session was ⚽️ 🏖️🏆🥇
Great to play with @melgaby.bsky.social after 8 years! (of course he’s as competitive as ever 😅)
@jakefwatson.bsky.social @tristan-geiller.bsky.social ⭐️
April 16, 2025 at 2:22 PM
..and it is not every meeting that your first task for the day is trying to keep up with Brazilian football on the beach!