Daniel Witvliet
@dwitvliet
Followers
1K
Following
364
Media
17
Statuses
201
Living the life as a Data Scientist at Coursera. Feel free to reach if you want to know what that's like! Opinions are my own and not my employer's. he/him/his.
Toronto, Ontario
Joined November 2015
How do brains rewire throughout life? . Our paper out in @Nature today outlines several principles of brain circuit development that we found by mapping the complete wiring of eight brains. #neuroscience #connectomics #brain #neurons #celegans #science
35
772
3K
RT @Wealthsimple: Want a chance to win 1 full bitcoin? Yeah, you do. Repost and reply with #WealthsimpleCrypto and #contest to be entered i….
0
4K
0
RT @coursera: Calling all teachers! Are you looking for new ways to engage your students? In the new course, Uncommon Sense Teaching, you w….
0
6
0
PDF available here for anyone interested in the full story:
2
22
58
See highlights here:
How does brain wiring change after birth? We tried to answer that question by mapping the wiring diagrams, or connectomes, of eight C. elegans brains across different life stages. See our preprint (and this thread) for the insights we found: 1/9
2
15
90
RT @WiringTheBrain: Inside the fly mind: "The connectome of the adult Drosophila mushroom body: implications for function" .
0
22
0
Ph.D. thesis defense virtual seminar on Thursday at 2:00 PM EST: ."Connectomes across development reveal principles of brain maturation in C. elegans". DM me if you want a link!
2
14
68
RT @janfunkey: The starting point for this work was the following question: Can we tell the neurotransmitter (NT) identity of Drosophila ne….
0
5
0
The molecular makeup and diversity of synapses throughout the brain change continuously throughout life - published in @ScienceMagazine by Grant Lab from @EdinUniBrainSci.
0
4
10
RT @ZuckermanBrain: NEW RESEARCH: A @ZuckermanBrain study in mice reveals how the brain builds bridges across time — by firing off bursts o….
0
29
0
Worm neurons across development. Each neuron has an intricate morphology, which is mostly stable from birth (L1) to adulthood. #neuroscience #brain #neurons #connectomics #celegans. 1/2
4
12
52
Worm brain among other science highlighted in April's best science "images" by @NatureNews. For anyone interested, the preprint describing the data is available on bioRxiv: #neuroscience #brain #neurons #connectomics #celegans
2
77
276
Comments are most welcome, to me or any of the other awesome authors. Special mention to @Ben_Mulcahy, who did an incredible amount of work, and @MeiZhen22, who led the work. And thanks to a lot of people for help, including @albertcardona, @dumpyunc, and many many others. 9/9.
5
2
13
TL;DR: We found several principles of synaptic rewiring across maturation. These principles argue that the maturation of brain and behaviour cannot be separated from wiring changes. Wiring changes may have ontogenetic, phylogenetic, and functional implications. 8/9
1
8
44
Finally, we found that maturation changes brain-wide network properties. Across maturation, the connectome becomes progressively more modular and feedforward, making the brain more reflexive (and less reflective). 7/9.
2
5
19
Stereotypic developmental wiring changes were also not uniformly distributed. Er found least wiring changes between interneurons that may constitute the core decision-making architecture of the brain. In contrast, we found extensive wiring changes among other cell types. 6/9
1
2
13
Variable connections are not uniformly distributed, being most common among modulatory neurons and least common among motor neurons. This suggests that variability is in some way regulated and may be functionally important, e.g. as a source of behavioral variability. 5/9
1
4
15
Some connections show stereotypic change across maturation, some are stable, and some are variable between animals. Variable connections, although usually weak, represent almost half of all connections, contrasting with the view that the worm connectome is hardwired. 4/9
1
5
19