Description:

The Department of Pharmacology is pleased to have a guest lecture presented by:

Dr. Ethan Goldberg, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Departments of Neurology and Neuroscience, Division of Neurology,The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Departments of Neurology and Neuroscience, The Perelman School of Medicine at The University of Pennsylvania.

The following, is an overview of this seminar, as described by Dr. Goldberg:

Achieving a greater understanding of neural circuit function and the basis of circuit dysfunction in disease will require the continued improvement of experimental tools capable of monitoring and manipulating the nervous system. Two-photon microscopy of calcium-sensitive probes allows imaging of the activity of many neurons at high speed and with cellular level resolution including at depth in the intact brain of experimental systems. The transformative technique of optogenetics utilizes genetically-encoded light-sensitive molecules to manipulate neuronal activity remotely, also with cellular-level resolution, and with millisecond temporal precision. Combining these techniques could allow for an unprecedented ability to investigate mechanisms of neural circuit function. The recent and rapid progress in the field of “all-optical” physiology will be reviewed. I will then discuss a novel combination of two-photon calcium imaging of the genetically-encoded indicator GCaMP6 with one-photon photostimulation of a red-shifted channelrhodopsin variant and its implementation in vitro. This “all-optical” technique could potentially be extended for specific applications in vivo.