Jake Watson

@jakefwatson.bsky.social

971 Followers 525 Following

Neurophysiologist @ ISTAustria Soon: @researchmar.bsky.social Synapses, hippocampus, human circuits. Google Scholar: https://bit.ly/jakefwatson Research summary: www.synapticarrangements.org

Image of a patch-clamp recorded human hippocampal slice, with firing profiles of recorded neurons (centre) showing higher burst firing in deep cells. An image from the GWAS analysis of Thompson et al. Nature Neuroscience 2025 (reproduced under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0; right) highlights the association between deep CA3 cells (CA3.2) and 'Education years' and 'Intelligence'.
Transcriptomic analysis of pig (left) and human (right) hippocampal data shows a subpopulation of CA3 cells specifically expressing St18 in both species (arrowhead), identifying the conserved deep CA3 cell type.
AAV labelling of CA3 cell types (red, superficial; blue, deep) shows their different projection patterns. Superficial cells project to CA3 and CA1 in both ipsilateral and contralateral hemispheres. Deep cells show a highly specific unilateral projection, mainly within CA3, at the base of stratum radiatum. A circuit schematic is shown on the right.
Neurons were birthdated by BrdU labelling (green) in St18-Cre mice (blue) at three developmental timepoints. Labelling is graphed (right) showing decreasing St18/BrdU co-labelling across development.
Neuronal labelling in St18-Cre mice (blue cells) shows specific labelling of deep CA3 neurons (upper right). Properties of patch clamp recorded cells (yellow, lower left) are plotted (lower right), with higher burst firing, longer primary dendrites, and less thorny excrescences in deep CA3 cells.
Allen Brain Cell Atlas spatial transcriptomic data shows deep and superficial locations of the cell types in CA3 (upper left), with St18 gene expression showing only in the deep cluster (upper right). UMAP and Sankey analysis in CA1 shows that deep and superficial CA1 neurons form a gradient rather than distinct cell types (lower).
UMAP depiction of CA3 neuron transcriptomic data reanalysed from the Allen Brain Cell Atlas showing two cell types (red and blue). Sankey diagram shows cluster stability across resolutions.
Mouse hippocampal slice with deep cells labelled blue, patch-clamp recorded cells in yellow, and deep CA3 projections labelled purple
Photo of Barcelona seafront showing Hospital del Mar and the PRBB
Patch clamp recorded CA3 pyramidal neurons filled with biocytin showing as white/gold on a black background.
FENS symposium advert stating: Symposium S29 - Wednesday 8th July 2026 15:40 - 17:10. Hall E Untangling the human brain: characterising the properties of human cells, synapses and circuits Speakers: Kimberly Siletti (Utrecht, Netherlands) Christiaan PJ de Kock (Amsterdam, Netherlands) Jake F Watson (Klosterneuburg, Austria) Anna Maslarova (New York, USA)
Composite figure showing (upper left), spontaneous PSC recording with correlated input into specific cells (purple). Cross-correlograms (lower) showed specific coincident input at t=0 onto pairs of PNs of the same subclass. Quantification (upper right) confirmed this effect, which could be blocked with the GABAAR antagonist GABAzine (purple).
Composite figure showing staining (lower) and schematic (upper left) of a multicellular recording containing two PN subtypes (superficial, red; and deep, blue). Right: Connectivity measurements within and between subtypes show similar connectivity from superficial cells to both other superficial cells and deep cells, whereas deep cells preferentially connect to other deep cells.
Collection of figures showing (upper left), multicellular patch-clamp recording pipettes in tissue, (lower left) example superficial (red) and deep (blue) pyramidal neuron stainings, with indicated thorns (arrowhead), and (right) graph of burst firing frequency for CA3 pyramidal neurons showing segregation of two subclasses.
A group of conference organisers, speakers, and students at lunch in Pipa!
Presentation introduction slide and presenter giving a great talk!
Cover of Cell journal (issue 188/2) depicting natural corals representing brains of different sizes on a rock in a Norwegian landscape.
'LICONN' connectomic images of mouse (left) and human (right) CA3, with individual cells segmented (colour). 3D reconstructions of the dendrites show their inputs (lower), with quantification (graph).
Details of CA3 modelling experiment where circuits with the same number of synapses but different circuit architecture were tested for memory capacity. Quantification (right) shows circuit form 'A' has better memory storage (independent of the total size - colours).
Circuit schematics showing the different connectivity of neocortex (dense local connectivity) and hippocampus (sparse broad connectivity). Dotted square indicates the lens of octuple patch recording to view the circuit.
Schematic of CA3 scaling features (left), and calculation of theoretical connectivity for random recurrent networks with these properties (right).
A collection of images showing the sizes of human and mouse hippocampal slices (grey), an array of CA3 neurons across species (upper) and measured spine densities on the cells (lower), with quantifications.
Example recordings (left) of CA3 synapses in mouse and human tissue. (Mouse - Red, Human - Blue). Quantification of synaptic potency, reliability, and precision are shown on the right as graphs.
Measured synaptic connectivity rates between brain areas (neocortex and hippocampus) on the left. Measured synaptic connectivity rates across species in hippocampal CA3 on the right.
Example image and recording traces of octuple patch-clamp recording from human hippocampal CA3
Human hippocampal slices showing non-sclerotic and sclerotic phenotypes, with cell loss in sclerotic tissue
Simulated mPSC data