Neural network art from microscopy: a 10-minute vector trace
A single fluorescence stack of a zebrafish larva's optic tectum contains thousands of dendritic arbors, each one a tangled signature of developmental biology.
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Zebrafish Behavior Tracking Software: Selection Guide
The tracking software works beautifully until the assay starts. Then the larvae disappear into glare, a stimulus change…
Sensory integration: 3 ways to map taste and smell
When you bite into a ripe strawberry, your tongue does not taste "strawberry." It registers a pattern of sugars, acids…
Zebrafish axon guidance tracking: a dual-color imaging plan
Axon guidance experiments fail at the same point more often than they fail at the microscope: the signal does not…
Brain wave music for public science events: a 3-step setup
The cortex hums. Across the skull, populations of neurons oscillate at frequencies anyone who has closed their eyes in…
Zebrafish sensory processing models: selection criteria
A zebrafish model can give you a beautifully clean sensory phenotype—or a beautifully clean readout of lighting…
Neural network 3D printing: a four-stage exhibition workflow
A 3D-printed brain sculpture can fail long before the printer starts. The dataset may be scientifically sound, the mesh…
Zebrafish agarose mounting: a step-by-step imaging plan
A live zebrafish brain is easy to image only after it stops moving. That is the bottleneck. If the larva drifts, bends…
Olfactory GPCR expression: a quick chaperone fix
A mammalian odorant receptor is a Type I GPCR that evolved inside an olfactory sensory neuron, where an entire support…
Sonification of neural data before and after musical mapping
Neural data sonification before and after musical mapping reveals a basic engineering problem: the signal and the sound…
Zebrafish light-sheet imaging: 4 phototoxicity fixes
A larval zebrafish at 48 hours post-fertilization presents an imaging scientist with a quiet paradox: the photons…
Olfactory receptor mapping in non-sensory tissues: 5 stages
A familiar problem appears halfway through a non-olfactory olfactory receptor project: the RNA-seq file contains a…
Habenular circuit mapping: a 4-step optogenetic protocol
Habenular circuit mapping fails at the first bottleneck more often than at the microscope. If opsin expression is not…
Neural data to MIDI: quick sonification for public events
The difficult part of turning neural activity into music is rarely the final sound. A synthesizer can respond to almost…
Light-sheet illumination setups for zebrafish brain imaging
A light-sheet setup can give you a remarkably clean view of neural activity across a larval zebrafish brain—until the…
Olfactory bulb circuits before and after sensory deprivation
A single day of unilateral naris occlusion is enough to remodel part of the olfactory bulb. The first measurable change…
Zebrafish calcium imaging sonification: a five-stage project
You've just walked out of the imaging room with a hard drive full of freshly minted GCaMP6f traces from a…
Zebrafish trigeminal assay: a step-by-step setup plan
A larval zebrafish trigeminal assay fails for predictable reasons. The stimulus is poorly calibrated. The larva moves…
Chemosensory signaling before and after phosphorylation
A chemosensory receptor does not switch from “on” to “off” when its ligand disappears. The decisive control point is…
Neuroscience public outreach: 5 creative methods for scientists
When photons strike the retina, the resulting signals travel through the optic nerve and thalamus before reaching the…
Microfluidic odorant delivery: zebrafish assay setup
A zebrafish olfactory assay fails when the stimulus is treated as a simple liquid exchange. It is not. The experiment…
Neuroscience lab artist residency model selection
You're staring at your hundredth confocal stack of zebrafish hindbrain, and you can describe every cell in your network…
Olfactory bulb mapping: 3 ways to improve spatial resolution
The zebrafish olfactory bulb is a small organ with a difficult job. Roughly the size of a pinhead, it packs…
Olfactory bulb calcium imaging: a fast baseline fix
Every fluorescent trace tells two stories. One is the signal you want: a glomerulus lighting up as an odorant binds its…
Brain activity visualization formats for public art
Okay, so picture this: you've spent three weeks prepping your EEG pipeline, you've got a clean signal from your Muse…
Sensory GPCR structural changes after ligand binding
A single residue shift of about 6 Å separates one sensory GPCR at rest from one in full activation. That distance is…
Zebrafish brain projection: a step-by-step gallery project
You've got the data. Maybe you spent three months injecting the right construct, raising your larvae to 6 days…
Larval zebrafish motor recovery after spinal cord injury
A mechanical lesion in a three-day-old zebrafish larva closes within roughly forty-eight hours. Within several days…
Olfactory receptor expression: one-step chaperone fix
Many mammalian olfactory receptors do not fail in a heterologous assay because their ligand is unknown or their…
Opsin Selection for Zebrafish Circuit Control
You can have a beautiful transgenic line, a healthy clutch, and a perfectly aligned light path—and still get the wrong…
Sci-art collaborations: before and after outreach impact
A science-art exhibit can close the baseline interest gap between STEM and non-STEM adults in a single visit. That…
Zebrafish behavior tracking: 4 open-source software tools
A zebrafish behavior assay can produce thousands of frames in a single session, but raw video is not yet a measurement…
Taste and smell integration: a zebrafish mapping project
Your larval zebrafish are swimming, the stimulus streams look beautifully separated, and the tracking software is…
Spinal cord circuit mapping in larval zebrafish
You have a spinal cord roughly 300 microns wide. It contains hundreds of interneuron subtypes making thousands of…
Neural data to MIDI: fast audio conversion for sci-art
Neural data does not arrive in a form that music can immediately understand. An EEG trace is a changing voltage…
Zebrafish immobilization: choosing the right imaging method
Your calcium movie looks clean until you ask the uncomfortable question: are those neural signals from the larva, or…
Odorant perception pathways: neural shifts before and after
A single odorant molecule contacting an olfactory sensory neuron does not enter a clean relay. It enters a sequence of…
Neuronal migration: 4 live-imaging methods for zebrafish
Neuronal migration is not a quiet relocation from one point in the brain to another. It is a sequence of decisions made…
Brain wave music: a step-by-step production workflow
A brain wave music project usually fails before the first note plays. The headset loses contact, the signal fills with…
Zebrafish brain registration: a guide to Z-Brain mapping
A confocal stack can look perfect and still be analytically unusable. Fluorescent reporters are firing across the optic…
Ectopic olfactory receptor screening: a fast RT-qPCR setup
Detecting olfactory receptors outside the olfactory epithelium is less like finding a bright signal than like…
Axon guidance assays: choosing the right setup for your lab
You're staring down the scope at a perfectly prepped stripe assay — alternating lanes of netrin-1 and BSA, your…
Neuroscience art: how interactive media shifts perception
A 22% drop in salivary cortisol. A 30% reduction in interleukin-6. A 28% decline in TNF-alpha. These are not…
Neural activity sonification: 4 ways to translate brain data
Brain data has a shape problem. The electrical chatter of neurons — the slow drift of cortical oscillations, the crisp…
Zebrafish GCaMP Lines: Choosing the Best Fit for Your Lab
You can have a beautiful zebrafish brain movie, a stable preparation, and a perfectly healthy-looking larva—and still…
Trigeminal receptor signaling: changes after capsaicin
A single bolus of capsaicin injected into deep craniofacial tissue drops the mechanical activation threshold of…
Habenulo-interpeduncular pathway: 4 mapping methods
The habenulo-interpeduncular pathway is a compact tract with an unusually large interpretive burden. In zebrafish, the…
Light-sheet zebrafish imaging: from mounting to data
A light-sheet zebrafish brain protocol can fail before the microscope ever starts collecting data. The usual culprit is…
Zebrafish chemosensory assays: a dual-stimulus setup
A larval zebrafish can discriminate between two chemical cues delivered 100 µm apart—across paired nasal cavities…
Sonified neural data: how it changes audience engagement
A range of 80 to 97 percent. That is the decline in insect populations represented by a prominent ecological…
Zebrafish brain imaging: 5 ways to prevent motion artifacts
During a fast volumetric calcium scan, a larval zebrafish twitches — a reflex adjustment, a momentary flex in a quiet…
Zebrafish olfactory mapping: from preparation to final data
You've pulled the fish out of the tank, you've pipetted what should be a perfect bolus of indicator into the naris…
Zebrafish Optogenetic Mapping: A Step-by-Step Lab Protocol
You can record calcium activity across the entire larval brain. That part is solved. The harder problem is assigning…