Meet Neuroni, our blog mascot

Hi! Vibe Lab Notes now has a mascot. Meet Neuroni.

As befits a neuroscience blog, Neuroni is modeled on a neuron, the nerve cell our brains are built from. You will see Neuroni being happy, puzzled and surprised alongside the posts here.

Neuroni is built like a real neuron

It is a cute version, but every part maps to real neuron anatomy.

Neuroni	In a real neuron
Round body	Soma: the cell body, home of the nucleus
Two forked horns on top	Dendrites: antennas that receive signals from other neurons
Arms	Also dendrites, and the key to Neuroni’s expressions
Curled tail	Axon: the long cable that sends signals onward
Teal segments on the tail	Myelin: insulation that makes signals travel faster
Round tip of the tail	Axon terminal: where the signal is handed to the next cell

So Neuroni picks up news with its horns and passes it on to you with its tail, which makes it a fitting mascot for a science blog.

Design notes

• Colors: dark navy outline, pale blue body, teal and yellow accents, matching the blog’s lab-notebook palette.
• White border: a thick sticker-style border keeps Neuroni visible in dark mode too.
• Original: drawn from scratch, not based on any existing character.

The 8 Neuroni stickers

These will pop up in posts from now on.

Sticker	When to use it
Happy	An experiment worked, good news
Thinking	An open question
Surprised	An unexpected result
Idea	A new approach
Caution	A pitfall or condition you need to know
Celebrate	Nobel prizes, successful trials
Tired	All-night debugging, endless paper reading
Thumbs up	A tool or method worth recommending

Neuroni was made with AI, too

Like this blog, Neuroni was made with AI. I split the work between two AI agents running at the same time: one restyled the blog, the other drew the mascot. I will write that process up in a separate post.

Looking forward to sharing what’s next, with Neuroni!