Marine Neuroscience Laboratory

Remember the #OCTRON preprint we published a couple of months ago? The pipeline just got a lot more powerful 💪🎉

Three smiling women wearing white lab coats and purple, blue or white gloves.

Happy international women in science day from all of us! 👩‍🔬

#WomenInSTEM
#WomenInScience
#InternationalDayOfWomenAndGirlsInScience

From left to right:
@noralied.bsky.social
@nadiave.bsky.social
@rijacobsen.bsky.social

A translucent tomopteris annelid decorated with five big red baubles, many small yellow string lights and a big yellow star at the tip of its tail, all on a black background. Three wrapped gifts are in the bottom right corner and on the left red text reads "Merry Christmas from the Marine Neuroscience Laboratory"

A Christmas present from us and the rest of the #OCTRON team to you: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🎁

🌟 Our first paper! 🌟

@octoscience.bsky.social has created a complete pipeline that makes tracking weird and wonderful animals a breeze, and we've had a blast testing it on our wriggly worms. Check out this thread to see it in action 👇

#OCTRON

Three smiling women wearing orange life vests and hard hats on the deck of a boat.

Two women in orange life vests and hard hats working on securing a plankton net

A smiling woman in an orange life vest and hard hat holding a red, rectangular piece of equipment. In the background is a fjord and blue sky with the sun covered by a white cloud.

A woman sitting in relative darkness looking up at the sky where green northern lights play.

We spent a week at Sletvik field station collecting worms! MSc student Amalie from the University of Copenhagen joined and stayed for 3 weeks to work in our lab 🌟

We caught ~60 Tomopteris with R/V Gunnerus during the day and were treated to great views of the northern lights at night

Blue capital letters on a black background with specks of blue. The text says "even in the darkest depths, it is possible to find light". The image was made with ChatGPT

#WorldMentalHealthDay #bioluminescence

Two women sitting on either side of a brown table facing the camera and smiling. Two red plates and glasses are on the table and lit light bulbs are hanging from the ceiling.

Celebrating the lab turning 5 years old at the restaurant Troll 🎉

We just published our third major funding application, including the evaluation it received, for the benefit of future applicants 🙌

Because #OpenScience is also about sharing ideas and examples that others can learn from 🌟

www.ogrants.org/grants/jacob...

Portrait photo of a woman smiling with long, light brown hair and wearing a black shirt, standing in front of green foliage.

Meet our first MSc student!

This is @noralied.bsky.social 🌟 She is in her 5th year studying natural science with teacher education at #NTNU, and for her thesis she will optimize immunohistochemical methods for detecting neurons in marine annelid brains 🧠💪

Happy #InternationalPolychaeteDay! 🌍🪱

To celebrate, here’s a glimpse of the bioluminescence of our gossamer worms! This video was captured in the lab by @nadiave.bsky.social using a monochrome camera — so it's in black and white — but in real life, the worms glow in a stunning bright yellow.

Two lemon meringue pies, each on a separate white plate, next to an orchid. White background.

Are you at the Gordon Research Conference on Neuroethology in Florence later this week? 👀

@nadiave.bsky.social will present a poster supported by a grant from the Tom Wilhelmsen’s Foundation (thank you for the support)!

We celebrated the grant with Nadia’s favourite treat: lemon meringue pie 🍋

Here's the video again but hopefully less blurry! ☺️

I'd never seen so many Tomopteris in one place - absolutely wild

How to make a biologist happy: provide almost 100 specimens of their favourite marine worm (how many do you see in the video?)

Big thank you to Snorre Bakke and his students at #NTNU #Ålesund. We had a busy weekend! 🤩

Amazing video! 🤩 would love to know which pheromone this is, or who discovered it in these worms?

A woman standing at the front of a lecture hall, giving a presentation. A powerpoint title slide is projected on the screen behind her.

A woman standing at the front of a lecture hall, giving a presentation. A powerpoint slide is projected on the screen behind her, which contains information about the model organism of her research.

Had a great time presenting at the NTNU-wide symposium "NeuroSYS" last week. A 5-minute datablitz is short, but I hope I made a few people curious about bioluminescent worms! ✨️

@marineneurolab.bsky.social
@kavlintnu.bsky.social #neuroscience #bioluminescence #research

Two square tiramisu pieces stacked on top of each other on a white, circular plate. Underneath the plate is a yellow napkin and an abstract patterned tablecloth. At the front of the image there are two pieces of confectionery in yellow and brown wrapping. The background is an abstract, twirling artwork in dark blues and greens.

In keeping with tradition, a big funding rejection (🥲) means it's treat time! More specifically, tiramisu-tower-time 🎉

It's not easy to start something new, but the like-minded people you meet along the way make it worth it. They keep science fun 🎈🌟

One thing we did last year was to build our lab and in this video made by @nadiave.bsky.social you can see how it all came together!

Our worms naturally live in the deep ocean where sunlight never reaches, so we built a tent where we can house them and do behavioural experiments in total darkness 🌚

A smiling woman wearing a green and black hiking clothes is sitting on a high, grey, stone, outcrop with a view. In the background there are green trees and a blue fjord with mostly clear sky above.

Two cups of coffee (one with foam), two cinnamon buns, a green plant and a folded purple hat are on a narrow, wooden table by a cafe window. Outside the window cobblestones are visible.

Nadia @nadiave.bsky.social is our 1st PhD student. She has her BSc in neuroscience and her MSc in marine biology, both from the University of Groningen (NL). She also likes to read books, take walks through the Norwegian nature, and have coffee and cinnamon buns at the coziest spots in the city ☕☺️

A woman wearing blue and black hiking clothes and wearing a black backpack and sunglasses, is standing on the right side of the picture next to a wide river flowing through the centre of the image. There are mountains in the background and the sky is cloudy.

An open book is at the forefront of the picture, with the readers feet resting on a white windowsill visible underneath. A mug with red flowers stands on the same windowsill and outside the sky is clear and leafy trees are visible.

Our group leader Ragnhild @rijacobsen.bsky.social is a systems neuroscientist who spends most of her time studying the brain's GPS and teaching animal physiology, running the MNL on the side. But she also loves spending time in the mountains 🏔️ and reading fiction 📚

Meet the team at the MNL!

We're a small lab with big ambitions, but also value time off. Because discoveries are made by humans, so you need to put their wellbeing first. Meet our humans below! 👇

We're a lab dedicated to marine neuroscience, focusing on a little worm that glows to communicate. What does it say with its flashes of light? And what role does its nervous system play? Stay tuned to find out! 🌟🌊🧠