Juavinett, A. L. | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2021

The Mismatch Between Neuroscience Graduate Training and Professional Skill Sets

Understanding the skill sets required for career paths is a prerequisite for preparing students for those careers. Neuroscience career paths are rapidly changing as the field expands and increasingly overlaps with computational and data-heavy job sectors. With the steady growth in neuroscience trainees and the diversification of jobs for those trainees, it is important to assess whether or not our training is matching the skill sets required in the workforce. Here, we surveyed hundreds of neuroscience professionals and graduate students to assess their use and valuation of a range of skills, from bench skills to communication and management. We find that professionals with neuroscience degrees can be clustered into three main groups based on their skill sets: academic research, industry research and technical work, and non-research. Further, we find that while graduate students do not use or highly value management and communication skills, almost all neuroscience professionals report strongly needing those skills. Finally, coding and data analysis skills are widely used in academic and industry research and predict higher salaries. Our findings can help trainees assess their own skill sets as well as encourage educational leaders to offer training in management and communication-skills which may help catapult trainees into the next stages of their careers.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2018

Chronically-implanted Neuropixels probes enable high yield recordings in freely moving mice

The advent of high-yield electrophysiology using Neuropixels probes is now enabling researchers to simultaneously record hundreds of neurons with remarkably high signal to noise. However, these probes have not been comprehensively tested in freely moving mice. It is critical to study neural activity in unrestricted animals, and the field would benefit from the inclusion of ethological approaches to studying the neural circuitry of behavior. We therefore adapted Neuropixels probes for chronically-implanted experiments in freely moving mice. We demonstrate the ease and utility of this approach in recording hundreds of neurons across weeks, and provide the methodological details for other researchers to do the same. Importantly, our approach enables researchers to explant and reuse these valuable probes.

neuroscience↗