Film
From signal to evidence
A 46-second introduction to the lab. It begins with one detected PET event and ends with the lab's own data, methods and research themes.
What you are seeing
Six beats, cut to the music
Signal
A single positron annihilation sends two photons to a detector ring. A stream of simulated coincidence lines is reconstructed until it converges on a real [11C]yohimbine PET map of the minipig brain, then pulls back to the measured figure (baseline, 8 minutes and 4 hours after nisoxetine). On screen: "It starts with a signal. Millions of them… become an image of chemistry in the living brain."
The lab
Name, unit and mission, in Annie's words: we investigate how brain disorders and treatments affect molecular signalling and brain function, with a particular focus on Parkinson's disease and depression.
How we work
PET, autoradiography, behaviour and tissue analyses land one per beat, settle into a grid, then round into overlapping circles: not a fixed sequence. The PET and autoradiography panels are the lab's published images; the behaviour trace is illustrative; the microscope is stock footage.
Research themes
Dopamine signalling and GPR6 · Synaptic imaging · Brain stimulation and neuromodulation · Neuroinflammation and glial responses. Each theme has a moving schematic: a seven-helix receptor releasing cAMP, a tracer finding SV2A on synaptic vesicles, pulses from a deep-brain lead and the vagus route, and microglia retracting and expressing TSPO near an insult.
Models
From rodents to Göttingen minipigs, connecting animal models with clinical research. Beside them are the lab's PET maps of the minipig brain: μ-opioid ([11C]carfentanil) and dopamine D2/3 ([11C]raclopride) receptor binding before and after sucrose, from the 2019 Scientific Reports study with Michael Winterdahl.
From signal to evidence
The paper opens from the scanner's centre. The mouse and pig walk into the emblem, the gantry closes around them and the brain halves meet. Scattered observations then settle onto a single curve.
Sources
What is real, and what is drawn
- PET. [11C]yohimbine VT maps from Landau AM et al., Biomolecules 2023;13:674, doi:10.3390/biom13040674, CC BY 4.0. Figure 3 panels were cropped and the labels were removed from the per-row strips. The colour bar was redrawn from the figure's own colours.
- PET in minipigs. Figure 1 of Winterdahl M et al., Sci Rep 2019;9:16918, doi:10.1038/s41598-019-53430-9, CC BY 4.0, shown whole and unmodified.
- Autoradiography. [3H]UCB-J in rat brain from Binda KH et al., Exp Neurol 2021;342:113741, doi:10.1016/j.expneurol.2021.113741, CC BY 4.0, cropped to the image area.
- Stock footage. Microscope objective by Mikhail Nilov, Pexels 9430414, colour-graded.
- Illustrative. The detection and reconstruction in the opening are a simulation (filtered back-projection of the real map, with Poisson noise). The behaviour trace, the four theme schematics and the brain outline (from the MNI152 template) are drawings, not data.
- Music and sound. Score composed for this cut with Eleven Music, 120 BPM, with the picture edited to its beat. Detector clicks are synthesised, and their rate follows the on-screen event count.
For Annie
Questions for this cut
- Placement. Should it be the homepage hero (muted, looping, with a "watch with sound" button), or live behind a play button on its own page like this one?
- Score. "Pulse" (marimba and vibraphone) or "Strings" (felt piano and string quartet)? Both are cut to the same beat.
- Opening. Is it fine to open on the [11C]yohimbine minipig study, or would you rather it resolve into a [11C]UCB-J image? That would need figure permission or an accepted manuscript.
- GPR6. The receptor schematic shows GPR6 coupling to Gs and raising cAMP, as described in the literature. It makes no claim about the lab's own results. Is that framing right?
- People. A 10-second team beat could be added once portraits exist.