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Christian Wilms

@cwilms.bsky.social
258 followers 342 following 192 posts

Fast learning preemie dad, fumbling skiff sailor, former cell watcher, endless dinghy builder, dabbling woodworker, budding star gazer.

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Reposted by Christian Wilms
Chiara Stringari @chiarastringari.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
LAST PLACES AVAILABLE for the International School: Multiphoton and multiharmonic microscopy for the life sciences: principles and applications
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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 05/10/2026
In addition to the big discoveries described in the Nobel Prize announcement, I’ll highlight this wonderful paper from Hegemann. They characterize the photocycles of ChR2. This kind of careful, brick-in-the-wall work is key to science. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Oh my: LibreOffice just made "no AI" one of their official features: blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/09...
blog.documentfoundation.org
Yes, no AI is now a feature - TDF Community Blog
One of the comments on the announcement of LibreOffice 26.8 was a simple question: “So, no AI is now a feature?” LibreOffice does not reject artificial intelligence out of hand, but an office suite us...
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Rob Campbell @raacampbell.com · 04/10/2026
Preprint is out! Our BakingTray software turns a 2-photon microscope into a serial-section tomography system for automated whole-organ imaging. ~€35k to convert an existing scope. 11 systems worldwide, >7,000 samples at SWC alone #neuroskyence #microscopy www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
A BrainSaw at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt. A Nikon 16x water-immersion objective on a 400 µm travel PIFOC allows for fast z-stacks. Samples are imaged and cut in the clear water bath. A Leica VT1000 vibratome is seen to the right with a mounted blade.How BrainSaw works. Samples are embedded in an agarose block, which is glued to a slide and clamped into a water bath. The bath sits on a three-axis stage under a 2-photon microscope; the stage moves the sample for both tile scanning and slicing. The microscope images the exposed face of the block, the vibratome cuts off the imaged layer, and the cycle repeats until the samples have been fully imaged. Data are stitched automatically and are ready for downstream analysis. Logos below: BrainSaw (hardware), BakingTray (acquisition software), StitchIt (stitching).Coronal section of an Sst-tdTomato mouse brain imaged on BrainSaw. tdTomato-expressing cells are shown in yellow, scattered through cortex and hippocampus; tissue autofluorescence is shown in blue.Coronal section of a mouse brain with three neighbouring viral injections targeting layer 5 of V1, expressing mCherry (red), eGFP (green) and BFP (blue). The thick apical dendrites of the labelled neurons are clearly visible, as are their axons projecting to distant targets. Image credit: Alex Fritzl.
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Christian Wilms @cwilms.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Thanks for sharing your discovery. What a lovely bit of jazz.
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Paul Fairie @paulisci.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Given how people look things up and the state of many of our tools to look things up with, I'm wondering if annually and manually updated printed reference handbooks will start to make a comeback.
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 26/09/2026
Does my Speak-n-Spell feel pain when I type O-U-C-H? The jury is out. Philosophers and neuroscientists say that's fucking stupid, but I called a guy from the Center for Pretending that Household Electronics Are Sentient and he said there's no way to know for sure.
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Reza Shadmehr @rezashadmehr.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
How does cerebellar output interact with motor cortex and basal ganglia to support goal-directed behavior? Dimitar Kostadinov will present. Talks are open to all (email me for link) Recorded talks: youtube.com/@shadmehrlab
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Kevin A. Scott, PhD @sculpturatus.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
found at ucsf
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Takuya Sasatani @takuyasasatani.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Miniscope Zero, the first fully wireless Miniscope, is on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social! Wireless power + data enable neural recordings in enclosed mazes, 3D environments & from two animals at once! @miniscope.bsky.social Paper: doi.org/10.64898/202... Wiki: miniscope.org/wiki/Minisco...
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Tony Kelly @tonykellyeu.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Very happy our work on a weird new nanoscale morphological feature is out in @science.org. A massive effort involving different high resolution microscopy techniques, multiple institutes, & years of work to convince ourselves DENDRITIC NARROWINGS EXIST #neuroskyence 🧪 doi.org/10.1126/scia...
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Dendritic shaft constrictions shape synaptic integration in neurons
For nearly 150 years, textbooks have described dendritic morphology as optimized for efficient synaptic voltage transfer from spines to the soma, implemented as a tubular design respecting Rall’s 3/2…
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Rita Strack @ritastrack.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
I picked up my passport with visa this morning so now I can officially get excited for our conference on Next-Generation Fluorescence microscopy in Beijing this week! natureconferences.streamgo.live/next-generat... It's a really stacked program because basically everyone we invited said yes!
natureconferences.streamgo.live
Next-Generation Fluorescence Microscopy
Organized by Tsinghua University, Nature Photonics, Nature, Nature Biomedical Engineering, Nature Biotechnology and Nature Communications. The conference will highlight key areas in fluorescence micro...
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Michael Spicer @michaelspicer.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
I cannot tell you what absolute fiction this is. AI is heading for a crash and this cackhanded Terminator narrative is being engineered to save them. The fact that the unsubstantiated testimony of a former employee has been the top story on BBC News all day is absurd and irresponsible.
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Johannes Vierock @johvierock.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Happy to announce that the #VierockLab is moving to #Goettingen joining the new #Else-Kröner-Fresensius-Center-for-Optogenetic-Therapies and a vibrant Optogenetics Community in their goal to bring Optogenetics to the clinic! In the #OpsinEngineeringLab we have Openings - please share and apply! 🚀☺️🎊
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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 10/09/2026
Semaphore xkcd.com/3295/
Comic. [Two identical machines face each other with a gap between them. Each is mounted on a box with a cable connecting it off-panel, webcams pointed at each other, and two flags at different angles that can move.] [caption] Networking tip: Separate sensitive components with a semaphore gap.
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Sebastian Munck @sebastianmunck.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Last call for our interuniversity course in advanced microscope - application deadline: 14 September www.flandersbioimaging.org/icalm26
flandersbioimaging.org
iCALM26 | Fbiv23
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Dr Jo Kershaw @mthrjo.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
The RNLI have some of the best people in Britain volunteering for them. They put their lives on the line when they are called on and they will rescue anyone who needs them. Because every life matters, and offering help is the right thing to do. You can donate here: rnli.org
rnli.org
RNLI - Royal National Lifeboat Institution - Saving Lives at Sea
The RNLI is the charity that saves lives at sea. We do this through lifeboat search and rescue, lifeguards, water safety education and international interventions.
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Brendan @chemscrapes.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
As a community service, I have demonstrated this in the kitchen using cling film and a teaspoon.
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Vittorio Saggiomo @vsaggiomo.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
ok, Bluesky has peaked for me. Forget about all that old place stuff. This is it!
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RAPP OptoElectronic @rappopto.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
1/3 ✨ What is holographic #photostimulation? It uses spatial light modulation (SLM) to shape a laser beam into defined light patterns, enabling tunable 3D illumination and simultaneous targeting of multiple selected ROIs within the field of view.
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Rob Campbell @raacampbell.com · 06/09/2026
Our BrainSaw serial-section 2-photon platform acquires whole-organ datasets automatically and requires minimal tissue processing. It has a growing international install base and has contributed to 35 publications. Learn more at: swcmicroscopy.com/brainsaw/ #microscopy #neuroscience
A BrainSaw serial section 2-photon system. This particular example was modified from an TissueCyte 1000 commercial system. Others have been built from scratch or were modified from in vivo multi-photon systems. Each BrainSaw is unique, but all run BakingTray serial section 2-photon acqusition software that plugs into ScanImage. Somatostatin tdTomato transgenic mouse imaged on BrainSaw serial section 2-photon. Full res images acquired at around 1 micron/pixel. Top images derived from 10 micron/voxel isotropic 3D stack. Detail from a BakingTray acquisition obtained from a BrainSaw serial section 2-photon microscope. Image shows three AAV injections leading to expression of fluorescent proteins (mCherry, GFP, and BFP) in layer 5 neurons of mouse primary visual cortex. Imaged at 780 nm.
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Sebastian Munck @sebastianmunck.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Great Opportunity for our interuniversity course on advanced microscopy. Please register before the 14th of September www.flandersbioimaging.org/icalm26
flandersbioimaging.org
iCALM26 | Fbiv23
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Christian Stöcker @christianstoecker.de · 30/08/2026
Kolumne: Selbst die, die an Batteriegroßspeicher glauben, haben ihr rasantes Wachstum dramatisch unterschätzt. Aktuelle Anschlusszusagen ergeben für Deutschland bereits ein Wachstum um den Faktor 27. Das wird das Stromsystem fundamental verändern (ob K. Reiche will oder nicht).
MEINUNG •Batteriegroßspeicher
Selbst ihre Fans haben diese Technik dramatisch unterschätzt

 Christian Stöcker
Eine Kolumne von Christian Stöcker
Fast unbemerkt vollzieht sich im deutschen Stromnetz eine Revolution. Die Gesamtkapazität aller Batteriegroßspeicher könnte um den Faktor 27 wachsen – und damit das Stromsystem verändern.
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Reza Shadmehr @rezashadmehr.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
How does the brain know when to act? Hidehiko Inagaki will present neural mechanisms that allow animals to time self-initiated movements, and how learning rewires circuits to adjust this internal timer. A fascinating look at how the brain turns intention into action.
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Erik A. Rodriguez @erin-rod.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Today, I would like to honor the memory of Roger Y. Tsien, who died on August 24, 2016. His legacy lives with all who use his technologies, including calcium sensors, fluorescent proteins, the acetoxymethyl (AM) ester, & many more! #FluorescenceFriday www.nature.com/articles/nme...
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Christian Wilms @cwilms.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Gotta love a Purk!
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Peter O'Toole @yorkbioimaging.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Registration is open for our International Hands-on Confocal Microscopy Course. www.york.ac.uk/biology/tech... Have fun whilst you learn. Highly interactive. 100% recommended and 5* rated. Limited to 12 delegates = lots of hands-on time. @globalbioimaging.bsky.social @eurobioimaging.bsky.social
york.ac.uk
Hands-On Confocal Microscopy Course
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London BioImage Interest Group @biig-ucl.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
The BioImage Interest Group is expanding! London-BIIG is bringing together microscopists and computational scientists across UCL, Crick, KCL and Imperial. Follow us for updates on bioimage analysis talks (@LMCB & Zoom) as well as next year's networking event! 🔬🧫 #L-BIIG
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John Innes Centre @johninnescentre.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
VACANCY - Funded by @European Research Council (ERC), we have three exciting opportunities for Postdoctoral Researchers to join the newly appointed Dr @hassansalem.bsky.social Group. These roles span: Developmental biology - okt.to/nq50wC 🧵
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voigtvision.bsky.social @voigtvision.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
🚨 Now out in @aaas.org Science Advances 🚨: aDISCO: a protocol for clearing & antibody-staining human formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue by Anna Maria Reuss! 🧠🔬#lightsheet #Microscopy @mesospim.bsky.social @ptrrupprecht.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
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Christian Wilms @cwilms.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Also wonderful. From recollection, after this happened a few times to people in the lab, IT arranged for a way for us to get the relevant confirmation on our own.
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Christian Wilms @cwilms.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Reminds me of sitting down for a Friday afternoon experiment and ScanImage not being usable, because Matlab expected me to have they it department confirm that I really do have a valid license. Not happening before Monday morning and my freshly prepped mice would have needed to be imagined *now*
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Huisken lab @huiskenlab.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Jan and Paul are back at MBL with a Flamingo microscope for the Zebrafish Development and Genetics course! Two weeks of exciting imaging sessions and zebrafish science are now underway. @mblscience.bsky.social #LightSheet #LSFM #PortableMicroscope #Flamingo #zebrafish
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Filip Tomaska @filip-tomaska.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
a friendly reminder to enjoy #kurtosis_summer
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Peter Rupprecht @ptrrupprecht.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Excited to share our work now in Nature Methods! We wrote this manuscript to help others better analyze and interpret calcium imaging data. As a central aspect, we show why nonlinear behavior of calcium indicators matters in practice. Very happy about this work!
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Katharina Nocun @kattascha.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Das alles fühlt sich zunehmend wie ein „Don‘t look up“-LARP an. 🫤
Das mitunter deprimierendste am Umgang mit der Klimakrise ist: Wenn man mit Umweltökonomen spricht, sagen die: "Das wäre alles locker machbar, wenn der politische Wille da wäre". Auch ohne große Einbußen für den Wohlstand. Einfach nur ordentlich besteuern & regulieren.
Aber je länger wir warten oder gar zurückrudern, desto drastischer werden in Zukunft die Maßnahmen sein müssen. Und irgendwann ist es halt zu spät. Das ist alles so unnötig, dass es weh tut.
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Jonas Wietek @jwietek.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
light-activated tetanus neurotoxin (LATeNT) by the @aliceyting.bsky.social lab. Includes a comparison with the light-switchable PdCO (www.nature.com/articles/s41...), showing a long lasting inhibition for 1h hour post illumination. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Light-activated tetanus neurotoxin for conditional proteolysis and inducible synaptic inhibition in vivo - Nature Methods
LATeNT is a light-activatable form of tetanus neurotoxin that can be used for spatiotemporally precise inhibition of exocytosis in neurons and other cells. It can inhibit synaptic transmission in vivo...
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Johannes Felsenberg @felsenberg.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Finally out in @natneuro.nature.com! A forgotten memory isn't always gone. We show that forgotten memories persist as silent memory traces, can be recovered by reminders, and can even be reconstructed into false memories. Excited to finally share this work! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Creating true and false memories from forgotten information in Drosophila - Nature Neuroscience
Forgotten memories in Drosophila persist as silent memory traces and can be recovered by reminder cues. Manipulating reminders can create false memories, showing that memory reconstruction flexibly in...
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Matteo Carandini @carandinilab.net · 31/07/2026
The apical dendrite looks great, and does wonders in a slice. What does it do in the living cortex? It depends on the cell. A causal spatial role for apical dendrites in the cortex www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... by @anyiliu.bsky.social with @kenneth-harris.bsky.social and @fedrossi.bsky.social
A cartoon providing a graphical summary of the paper. It is divided in 3 rows.

The top row shows a pyramidal cell and its apical tuft, and shows the two experiments that we ran: optical dendritic pruning (chopping off the apical tuft), and synaptic imaging done in the same neurons where we do somatic imaging. 

The middle row shows the results pertaining to neurons that prefer large stimuli (this is visual cortex): pruning reduced their responses, and the receptive fields of apical synapses are far away from the that of the soma. 

The bottom row shows the results pertaining to neurons that prefer small stimuli: pruning seemed to do nothing to the responses, and the receptive field of apical synapses are right around that of the soma.
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Dan Feldman @danfeldman.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
The Neuroscience Department at UC Berkeley is hiring an Asst Professor in Computational Neuro. All areas of computational/theoretical neuro are welcome. Deadline Oct 30. Join our neuroscience community! aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05446 #AcademicJobs #Neuroscience #NeuroJobs
aprecruit.berkeley.edu
Assistant Professor - Computational Neuroscience - Department of Neuroscience
University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!
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Tobias Rose @trose-neuro.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
@ptrrupprecht.bsky.social providing the new go-to GECI reference. Read when doing calcium imaging. rdcu.be/fwF82
rdcu.be
Spike inference from calcium imaging data acquired with GCaMP8 indicators
Nature Methods - In this Analysis, Rupprecht et al. investigate the behavior of GCaMP8 variants in spike inference using several different algorithms. They highlight the role of the...
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Reza Shadmehr @rezashadmehr.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
If an action results in error, each neuron requires an individualized teaching signal that guides change in its output. This is the credit assignment problem of learning. Are there neurons in the brain that can compute such a sophisticated teaching signal? Yes. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Climbing fibers encode the gradient of a loss function for the cerebellum
Neurons in the brain are often many synapses away from motoneurons, yet if a movement results in error, each distant neuron needs a teacher that considers its specific contribution to production of th...
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Pacific Optica @pacificoptica.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Che-Hang brought the Ventana, and @ianoldenburg.bsky.social brought the holography. All-optical 2p neurophysiology @cshlcourses.bsky.social A great collab. Summer courses are the best.
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Spencer LaVere Smith @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Two-photon calcium imaging. What makes for good data? How can we optimize experiments to get good data? New post labrigger.com/blog/2026/07... and new free web apps from @filip-tomaska.bsky.social (1/8)
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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
New Toettchlab paper alert! Harrison Oatman just published his beautiful work combining software design for "smart" microscopy+optogenetics and some really beautiful work understanding EGFR-driven collective cell migration. www.cell.com/cell-systems...
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Alex Kwan @alexkwan.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
We get asked often - what is the duration of psilocybin's effects in the mouse brain? 🧠 There exist data, and now we have also measured it ourselves: Time to peak was 33 min and brain half-life was 56 min. Part of a preprint on drug-evoked dendritic Ca2+ signals: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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RAPP OptoElectronic @rappopto.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
1/3 🤔 Did you know an existing Olympus BX51WI can be upgraded into a 2P microscope? ➡️ With @Sutter’s DF-Scope®, a familiar lab workhorse for electrophysiology, transmitted-light and epifluorescence workflows gains the key optics/electronics for #TwoPhotonMicroscopy.
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Nikolas Karalis @nikolaskaralis.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Registration is now open for the Paris Circuit Dynamics Conference & Workshop 2026! Neuromodulation of Neuronal Circuits: From Behavior to Computation Paris Brain Institute 16–17 September 2026 Registration is free (but required): www.paris-circuits.eu
paris-circuits.eu
Paris Circuit Dynamics
This conference will bring together leading experts to discuss how neuromodulatory systems shape neuronal circuit dynamics, behavior, and computation. The program will focus on how neuromodulators suc...
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adamezracohen.bsky.social @adamezracohen.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
We developed a new approach for mapping absolute membrane voltage, based on dynamic photocycle control in Voltron2. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Here's my favorite example: human iPSC colonies break into electrical domains as they begin to differentiate.
Top image shows a greyscale picture of some cells.  Bottom image shows a voltage map overlay in color, with two electrical "domains".Wide-area view of membrane voltage in human iPSC colonies.
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