Optogenetics Club Lecture

Chairs: Tobias Moser and Thomas Mager

Professor Dr. Simon Wiegert from the Center for Molecular Neurobiology Hamburg (ZMNH), Germany will talk about “Illuminating hippocampal circuits: tools, synapses and networks”

Abstract

How do the networks of the brain encode and store information? Nodes in brain networks can change their connectivity upon learning. Such changes in connectivity are believed to alter the flow of information within and between brain regions. However, in order to understand such macroscopic changes, we still need to better understand the underlying mechanisms at the microscopic scale. This is challenging, since the brain operates at different levels of complexity, which are spanning orders of magnitude in space and time. Therefore, we need to expand our experimental toolsets to facilitate the investigation of brain networks at multiple scales. In my presentation I will argue that optical methods enable us to get closer to this goal. In the first part of my presentation, I will briefly talk about a potential synaptic mechanism underlying changes in connectivity in the hippocampus. I will then present a study that investigates how different anesthetics uniquely alter synaptic stability, hippocampal network dynamics and memory formation in mice. In the last part of my talk, I will present new optogenetic tools from my lab that enable addressing hitherto inaccessible questions in the field of neuroscience.

Poster of the talk