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Microelectrode array (MEA) technology is routinely used to measure the physiological activity of electrogenic cells. We will present two novel high-density MEA (HD-MEA) systems designed for studying neural signals at high resolution, in networks and single cells. Additionally, we will highlight key applications, including neurocomputing, present relevant data and analysis techniques, and demonstrate how our HD-MEA technology advances the study of physiological processes in biological samples

The presence of bacteria in solid human tumors has been documented for over a century. However, only in recent years has a more comprehensive characterization of this low-biomass microbiome been undertaken. We have been characterizing the presence of bacteria and fungi across a wide range of human tumor types and have begun to dissect their functional roles and clinical relevance, including their impact on responses to therapy. In this seminar, I will provide a brief overview of the current understanding of the multi-kingdom tumor microbiome landscape and present our findings on its potential effects on cancer therapy.

 In recent years, groundbreaking research revealed many surprising roles for astrocytes in addition to their well characterized supportive roles, in modulating neuronal activity and even behavior. I will talk on one hand about manipulating astrocytes to alter neuronal activity and behavior and on the other hand about imaging astrocytes in behaving animals.We chronically imaged CA1 astrocytes using 2-photon microscopy when head-fixed mice were trained mice to run on a linear treadmill and proceed in a virtual environment to obtain water rewards. We found that astrocytic activity persistently ramps towards the reward location in a familiar environment. When the reward location was changed in the same environment or when mice were introduced to a novel context, the ramping was not apparent. Using linear decoders, we accurately reconstructed mice location trajectories in a familiar environment from astrocyte activity alone. This is the first indication that astrocytes can encode position related information in learnt spatial contexts, thus broadening their known computational abilities, and their role in cognitive functions.To directly and specifically modulate astrocytic activity we employed a chemogenetic approach: We expressed the Gq-coupled designer receptor hM3Dq in astrocytes, which allowed their time-restricted manipulation, and discovered that astrocytic activation is sufficient to induce de-novo long term potentiation, enhance memory allocation and augment memory recall on the following day. I will talk about these published works and about non-published results on the role of astrocytes in Alzheimer's disease

Understanding how cortical circuits give rise to perception-allowing us, for example, to hear and see the world-remains a central challenge in neuroscience. The application of concepts from cognitive science, such as Representational Similarity Analysis, has proven valuable for interpreting large-scale neuronal recordings, including in rodent models. In this work, I present recent efforts from our laboratory to characterize the structure of auditory representations in the mouse cortex and demonstrate how these representations can be used to predict behavioral phenomena such as stimulus generalization and perceptual choice biases. Moreover, leveraging neuronal activity recordings at single-cell resolution, I describe our findings on the circuit mechanisms that organize sound-evoked activity into structured representational maps and maintain their integrity in the face of perturbations, including synaptic volatility and neuronal loss.