iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 05/10/2026

In honor of today's Nobel: throwback to the 2013 Christmas party at the department of Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet, when a hopeful young researcher joined us for the festivities!

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 15/09/2026

Well, it is a local departmental thing, so it's mostly for PhD students to practice presenting, but yeah. The whole theme this year is AI, apparently. I've rebelled by paying a young artist to make some illustrations for me. Nobody is going to mistake @maxdapanda.bsky.social's work for AI slop!

Illustration of a person, deep in thought.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 13/09/2026

I wasn't sure if I'd make it here before sunset, but looks like my timing was actually perfect!

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 13/09/2026

Days are getting shorter and colder in Norway, so with the sun out, I figured today was a good day for a ride! #motosky

A motorcyclist smiling at the camera, a motorbike behind him, and a fjord with the setting sun as scenery.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 08/09/2026

Not the prettiest cell, but I'll take it: a voltage imaging recording of a striatal SST interneuron in vivo! 🧠 Now if we can pull this off with PV interneurons too, we'll really be cooking.

A red line on a graph shows intermittent spikes rising up from the baseline. The visible trace spans aapproximately five seconds.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 08/09/2026

I'm sorry, is this a personal attack or something?! #snooze4life

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 04/09/2026

As a non-native speaker, I was only taught proper English in high school. Seems it stuck 😎

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 03/09/2026

Ooh, shiny new dichroic from Chroma already arrived! I bet the optics tweeps here can figure out what it is 😎

A shiny piece of glass, held in a gloved hand. It appears to be half orange, half blue.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 22/08/2026

Look I'm not weird, that's just a _really_ satisfying switch okay. Just hear that thunk!

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 20/08/2026

As an aside, I'm not sure what slop machine produced this text, but 30kph is 18.6mph, not 15.5mph. I'm guessing that 15.5 is the correct number, since 25kph is the limit for e-bikes in Europe. That also matches 28mph being nearly double.

A screenshot from the linked article, claiming 30km/h equals 15.5mph.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 20/08/2026

"No thanks, that sounds dangerous, I'll just ride my motorbike there instead" was not something I expected to be saying.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 20/08/2026

How do you do, fellow science nerds 🥸

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 13/08/2026

"Describe your research with a youtube thumbnail"

A thumbnail of a video by James Hoffmann, posted today on youtube. The thumbnail proclaims: "technically flawed but still compelling".

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 11/08/2026

Someone from @mathworks.bsky.social once contacted me after I ranted about Matlab, and I strongly feel that if you don't want me to get mad about Matlab, perhaps don't throw errors like "you don't have a license for the version of Matlab you're not using" at me.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 09/08/2026

Whenever I travel, I like to bring back some local chocolate for the lab. May have overdone it a bit on my recent roadtrip 🫣

Six bars of chocolate, bearing the flag emojis for Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 05/08/2026

Made it to Klaipéda and the baltic sea. Tomorrow, I'll take the ferry back to Sweden. But today, I got to enjoy Curonian Spit National Park (Kuršių nerijos nacionalinis parkas), where I snapped this photo in the absolutely sweltering heat. Too bad I didn't bring my own swimming trunks!

A somewhat ethereal shot of the baltic sea blending into the sky above. In the lower-right, two swimmers can seen protruding from the sea.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 04/08/2026

Just walked into an old soviet nuclear missile silo, and immediately lost all cell reception. Absolutely dream location for some patch-clamp electrophysiology! 🧠

The top of a nuclear missile silo. Silo doors are overhead, and a large hole would have housed a nuclear missile, but currently primarily houses spiders.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 04/08/2026

Twenty kilometers of Latvian dirt roads were a bit much, but we've made it back onto pavement and to Lithuania! #motosky

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 03/08/2026

A remarkable city; wish I could stay here longer than just one day.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 02/08/2026

The local gulls in #Tallinn have apparently learned to beg tourists for food. I am sure this will end well.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 02/08/2026

"How do you moor a ferry?" With a vacuum, apparently!

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 02/08/2026

Made it to Helsinki! Apparently I am not the only motorcyclist taking the ferry to Tallinn today. So many cool bikes!

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 30/07/2026

"I'm going to ask Santa for a research grant!" "Huh? You still believe in research grants?"

The author of this post standing in front of Santa's home in Rovaniemi.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 28/07/2026

Good evening from Arvidsjaur, Sweden!

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 27/07/2026

DEFINITELY in moose country! #Sweden #motosky (I think technically they're elk, but I never figured out the difference)

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 27/07/2026

First stop on my roadtrip; I think I may be in moose country... #Sweden #motosky

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 24/07/2026

According to my sister, stickers are the prison tattoos of laptops. This one's done some time! (Spot that gorgeous brain sticker from @christineliu.art !)

A closed laptop with stickers adorning the lid.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 23/07/2026

I fondly remember visiting Dunedin in summer, climbing all the way up to the Signal Hill Lookout, and really admiring the vast vistas that were laid before my eyes:

Mist. Some trees at the bottom. But just mist.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 20/07/2026

I don't know man; one day you're hip and young, the next you have a drawer where you keep various lengths of wire.

A very organized cabinet where I keep various lengths of wire.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 20/07/2026

Write an (academic) horror story in six words: "The coffee machine has been removed"

An empty wall where a kitchen used to be.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 19/07/2026

What? What are you doing there? You're not a train!

Heavy machinery equipped with an extra set of train wheels, riding on a train track

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 14/07/2026

While we do most of our recordings with a 1P system, we decided to check what these dopamine axons looked like under @koenvervaeke.bsky.social's 2P microscope. Makes for a darn pretty picture!

A tangled mess of axons expressing GCaMP8s can be seen wrapping around invisible neurons in the dorsomedial striatum.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 10/07/2026

Scenes like these feel like they belong in some cute Japanese anime; but it's right here in Oslo! The lab decided to hike up Vettakollen for lunch today; it was lovely, if not a smidge warm.

View of a sunny open-air train station, with a train pulling up in the distance. There is a blue sky with a single cloud visible in the distance, and plenty of green everywhere.

A traintrack with a train on it, viewed from an elevated position. There are trees on both sides of the track, and a red house to the left of it. In the far distance, hills and a fjord can just be seen over the trees.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 10/07/2026

Happy #FluorescenceFriday! When investigating striatal cholinergic neurons, it's a good idea to check what dopamine is doing. So, @livija-sarauskyte.bsky.social put an axon-expressing GCaMP8s in midbrain dopamine neurons, and imaged dorsal striatum during a simple task. So much going on! 🧠

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 07/07/2026

Added some lighting to the behaviour rig; may have overdone it a smidge? #cyberpunk #mousepunk 🧠

A large running wheel bathed in red light, under an objective emitting a pale blue glow.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 26/06/2026

Weirdest thing happened recently: a new #Hamilton syringe cracked and broke (top). I had never seen this before, so I emailed them about it. A week later, a brand new one unexpectedly showed up! Now that's the kind of customer service that makes me happy to buy from them again.

Two glass nanosyringes. The top one has a visible crack near the right end, the bottom one is pristine.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 14/06/2026

This is such a common occurrence in neuroscience, I learned about it as a trope in undergrad. Heck, @xkcd.com made a brilliant comic about it!

If you need some help with the math, let me know, but that should be enough to get you started! Huh? No, I don't need to read your thesis, I can imagine roughly what it says.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 08/06/2026

Can't visit Sweden without bringing back some proper chocolate for the lab 😋

Several bars of Marabou chocolate, which is much better than Norwegian chocolate.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 06/06/2026

Me: "After riding all day, I could do with a beer and a burger" Karlskoga: "Say no more fam"

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 06/06/2026

I'm in Karlskoga at the moment; it's a mood 😂

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 06/06/2026

Grattis på nationaldag, Helena!

A photo of the lake near Lindesberg, Sweden. There are boats, trees line the shore, and the sky is blue with a small assortment of clouds.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 06/06/2026

Today has been a good day to ride. Happy national day, Sweden! #nationaldag #motosky

A first-generation Yamaha XSR900 parked in front of a lake in Sweden. Small trees and shrub flank the motorcycle. The sky is half overcast, but on the far shore, sunlight can be seen.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 30/05/2026

It is insane; prices for hard drives literally doubled in a year. I get why dropbox and alike are upping their prices, but we're left with essentially no affordable options...

A graph showing the price of a 24Tb internal hard-drive, from $300 in June 2025 up to over $600 in June 2026.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 27/05/2026

Quick PSA: while they taste the same, a 147Ω and a 10MΩ resistor are not, in fact, interchangeable. You know, if like me, you were wondering why your circuit wasn't working.

A soldered PCB with wires everywhere, in a large tangled mess that belies a simulacrum of sanity embedded in madness. Also there's an arduino.

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Matthijs Dorst @mattneuro.dorst-lab.org · 26/05/2026

Thank you for your sympathy, truly this will be one of the most tortuous weeks of my life

A screenshot showing the weather forecast for Oslo. The prediction oscillates around 20'C.

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