Applied Methods in Neuroscience

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).

Expansion Technology (Danzl Group)
Animal models (Jonas, De Bono & Hippenmeyer Group)
Organoids & cortical spheroids (Novarino Group)
Proximity labeling (De Bono Group)
Advanced brain surgeries in humans (Medical University Vienna)
Generation of transgenic rodents (PCF – Transgenic animals)
In vivo electrophysiology in awake mice (Siegert, Csicsvari & Jösch Group)
In vitro electrophysiology (Jonas Group)
Computational modeling (Vogels Group)
Neural Population Analysis - (Two-Photon) Calcium Imaging and analysis (Jösch Group)
MADM (Hippenmeyer Group)
Clone-Patch (Hippenmeyer Group)
Cytometry (Hippenmeyer Group)
RNA-Seq (Hippenmeyer Group)
MERFISH (Danzl Group)
Aerotaxis/chemotaxis assays in C.elegans (De Bono Group)
Functional EM + subcellular in vitro electrophysiology (Jonas Group)
Flash & fracture (Shigemoto Group, PCF)
Clearing & imaging (Sweeney Group, IOF)

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):
Uladzislau Barayeu Hanna Schön Raquel Casado Polanco Sofia Barros Alves Tavares Taveira Rebecca Arnold Sophie Gobeil Rimma Bondarenko