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Xinxin Ge @xinxinge.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Happy to share this as my first post here and break the silence on this account 🙂

Xinxin Ge @xinxinge.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Huge thanks to the entire team, my colleagues in the Scanziani lab, my mentor Massimo Scanziani, co-first author Xing Wei, and the team in our amazing collaborator @xinduan.bsky.social 's lab.

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Xinxin Ge @xinxinge.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

We identified distinct bottom-up and top-down signatures defined by cell-type composition and GABAergic/glutamatergic neuron ratios. These signatures predict a hierarchy spanning thalamic nuclei and visual cortical areas, establishing a cellular framework for cortical hierarchy.

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Xinxin Ge @xinxinge.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

To address this, we combined an anterograde transsynaptic tracer with spatial transcriptomics—an approach developed by our collaborator @xinduan.bsky.social duan—to molecularly identify and spatially map postsynaptic targets of thalamic starter neurons across mouse visual cortex.

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Xinxin Ge @xinxinge.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

The mammalian sensory cortex is hierarchically organized and contains a vast diversity of cell types. Its main information conduit, the thalamus, provides both bottom-up and top-down inputs. Yet how these thalamic inputs map onto molecularly diverse cortical neurons was unclear.

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Xinxin Ge @xinxinge.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

How do bottom-up and top-down thalamic inputs map onto the rich cellular taxonomy of the visual cortex? We combined transsynaptic tracing with spatial transcriptomics to find out. Our new preprint reveals a cellular framework for cortical hierarchy: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.org

The Logic of Thalamic Inputs onto the Molecular Taxonomy of Cortical Neurons Reveals a Visual Hierarchy

The hierarchical organization of sensory cortices and the rich molecular taxonomy of their cell types are defining features of the mammalian cortex. Cortical areas along this hierarchy are reciprocall...

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