Course info

The goal of this course will be to introduce students to advanced techniques used in neuroscience. It will not provide fluency in any individual technique, but instead a better understanding of current strengths and limitations of each technique, what questions it can be used to address, and the requirements for planning and running such experiments. The intention would also be for students to learn who the “local experts” are amongst their colleagues and hopefully encourage greater collaboration.

Each session would be hosted by a postdoc or other experts from one of the participating neuroscience groups, who would introduce students to a method they use routinely in their lab. The format would be that the lecturer(s) send a paper in advance that highlights their method so students would have an understanding of the basic approach. The lecture would involve a roundtable and/or short presentation covering the basics of the technique, what questions it can be used to address by using examples in the literature, and/or future avenues for the development of this technique. This would be followed by a lab portion that involves shadowing the lecturer(s) as they demonstrate the protocol (or the key steps if the full protocol is not possible due to time).

Typically, about 10-12 different techniques (~1 per week) will be covered for each semester. Some previously covered techniques include:
1) Ben Suter (Jonas)– Rapid intro to brains, neurons, synapses, basic anatomical techniques, in vivo, ex vivo and in vivo mouse preparations, and optogenetics
2) Giselle Cheung (Hippenmeyer)– Patch-sequencing workflow and its applications
3) Melissa Stouffer (Hippenmeyer)– Culturing of cerebral and cortical organoids
4) Peter Koppensteiner (Shigemoto)– Freeze fracture replica preparation and labeling followed by practical observation of samples
5) Anton Sumser (Joesch)– Two-Photon Calcium Imaging: Recording activity of thousands of neurons in behaving animals with a microscope
6) Carolina Borges Merjane (Jonas) – Optogenetic stimulation of live brain tissue followed by high pressure freezing
7) Robert Beattie (Hippenmeyer)– Clonal analysis in the cortex using MADM
8) Margaret Maes (Siegert)– Live ex vivo imaging of acute cortical brain slice and retina
9) Kohgaku Eguchi (Shigemoto) – Membrane capacitance measurement to monitor synaptic vesicle exo/endocytosis
10) Yoav Ben Simon (Jonas) – Online tools for the fumbling experimental neuroscientist
11) Ben Suter (Jonas)– Synaptic circuit-mapping with subcellular resolution by optogenetic laser-scanning photostimulation
12) Jake Watson (Jonas) - Slice Electrophysiology for network analysis
13) Nicole Amberg (Hippenmeyer) - Fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS)
14) Magdalena Picher (Jonas) - In vivo patch-clamp and extracellular recordings in awake, behaving mice
15) Mario Avellaneda (Sixt) - Optical tweezers (single-molecule force spectroscopy) and how they can help molecular neuroscience
16) Murat Artan ( De Bono) - Biotin ligase-based proximity labeling
17) Heloisa Choissi (Csicsvari) and Fluorian Schmidt (Joesch) - Recording and analysis of neuronal population dynamics in behaving animals
18) Florian Pauler (Hippenmeyer) - Practical guide to (single cell) RNA-Seq at ISTA
19) Mojtaba Tavakoli (Danzl) - Fluorescence Nanoscopy
20) Ana Villalba Requena (Hippenmeyer) – Single cell isolation

Potential list of lecturers for the upcoming semester include:
1) Katharina Lichter and Peter Koppensteiner - Flash & Freeze
2) Ana Villalba Requena - FACS
3) Florian Pauler - RNA-Seq
4) Jake Watson & Andrea Navas - in vitro electro
5) Nathalie Agudelo Dueñas - Spatial transcriptomics “MERFISH”
6) Raquel Casado - MADM
7) Alessandro Venturino - In vivo electrophysiology in awake mice
8) Fabrizia Pipicelli – Patch-sequencing workflow and its applications
9) Vittoria Mariano - Organoids/cortical spheroids
10) Mojtaba Tavakoli - Expansion microscopy
11) Chaitanya Chintaluri & Andrea Navas - Computational modeling
12) Divyansh Gupta -> Extracellular electrophysiology (Neuropixels)

Target group: Students (PhD/Master/Internship) or scientists (Postdocs/technical staff) at all levels.

Prerequisites: Basic understanding of neuroscience.

Evaluation: Attendance, participation and one small writing assignment. Students must deeply read an article provided by the lecturer before each lesson. As each lecturer presents only once, students are expected and highly encouraged to attend all sessions. Assignment for course credits only: at the end of the course, students must each give a short (5-10mins) powerpoint presentation of a project proposal making use of at least two techniques covered during the course. They will be given feedback on their implementation of techniques.

Teaching format: Introductory lecture and discussion followed by lab demonstrations.

ECTS: 6 Year: 2024

Track segment(s):
Elective

Teacher(s):
Katharina Lichter Ana Villalba Requena

Teaching assistant(s):