Biophysics Seminar- Dr. Kevin Boergens
Biophysics Seminar
October 15, 2021
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Location
2214 SES, Zoom Link: https://uic.zoom.us/j/88933202324?pwd=RHltdmFTRWNOTy90cHFpTmtKUW81QT09
Address
901 W. Taylor St., Chicago, IL 60612
Calendar
Download iCal FileAbstract- Light-based methods are a commonly used tool to analyze neural circuits, but there are limits of what can be achieved with photonics: Calcium imaging is used to measure activity patterns in living tissue, but long-term calcium imaging has not been demonstrated in humans due to safety and regulatory
concerns. Therefore, building an interface to the human brain means directly measuring the electric impulses of the brain. After decades of slow progress, several med-tech startups are now closing in on bringing an FDA approved long term brain-machine interface to market. I will talk about some of the work my team and I at Paradromics did to overcome technical obstacles and make brain machine interfaces a reality. For histology, light microscopy is limited in terms of resolution. Neurons routinely narrow down into processes that are thinner than what a light microscope can resolve. Connectomics - the field of mapping the connections between neurons - has overcome this by using electron microscopy to trace processes through the brain. So far however progress has been limited by the enormous complexity and cost of recording large-scale 3D electron microscopy datasets. I will discuss the work I did during my PhD in this field, and I will detail recent developments that are about to revolutionize and democratize 3D EM based connectomics.
Date posted
Oct 11, 2021
Date updated
Oct 11, 2021