DONATE MAINS

GiuliaGiulia Faini is a post-doctoral researcher in Filippo Del Bene's team. Fascinated by the complexity of the brain and brain microcircuits, she naturally turned to neuroscience.

Her work focuses on the neural networks of the larval zebrafish, which is in line with the work of the Del Bene team, which studies the formation and functioning of the visual system of these fish in particular. She measures the activity of the neural circuits with sophisticated observation tools, such as the microscope with which she took her photo.

"RastafariFish: every little thing is gonna be alright" shows a larval zebrafish whose opsin-expressing neurons are marked in red, and whose neuronal activity is stained with a green activity indicator. The biphoton microscope with which the image was taken makes it possible to go deep into the tissues and to stimulate neurons extremely precisely using infrared light. At the same time, it is possible to measure their activity and to observe the effect of this optical manipulation on the neuronal network or on the animal's behaviour itself.

Portrait and text by Delphine Menard