All posts by Mathilde Maughan

Bioenergetics for Brain Function

Course overview

The brain is one of the most energy-consuming organs of the body. Indeed, one could say that the main difference between the brain and a computer is the plug: once plugged, energy is not an issue for the computer, but it is a constant burden for each cell of the brain. As such, energy metabolism in the brain is not just a mere housekeeping and survival service, but it constitutes an essential element directly participating in signaling, computation and behavior.

This course will address the different ways by which energy metabolism participates to high-order brain functions and the underlying cellular, molecular and circuit mechanisms.

Course directors

University of Salamanca,

Spain

NeuroCentre Magendie – INSERM
University of Bordeaux
France

Centre RMSB – CNRS
University of Bordeaux
France

Keynote Speakers

Felipe Barros – Centro de Estudios Cientificos, Valdivia, Chile
Juan Pedro Bolaños – University of Salamanca, Spain
Gilles Bonvento – CNRS, MIRCen, Paris, France
Anne-Karine Bouzier-Sore – CNRS, Centre RMSB, Bordeaux, France
Daniela Cota – INSERM, Neurocentre Magendie, Bordeaux, France
Jaime De Juan-Sanz – Institut du Cerveau, Paris, France
Stephanie Fulton – University of Montreal, Canada
Ralf Jockers – Inserm, Institut Cochin, Paris, France
Giovanni Marsicano – INSERM, Neurocentre Magendie, Bordeaux, France
Aude Panatier – INSERM, Neurocentre Magendie, Bordeaux, France
Luc Pellerin – IRTOMIT, Poitiers, France
Carmen Sandi – EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

Instructors

Felipe Baeza-Lehnert – University of Leipzig, Germany + Centro de Estudios Científicos, Valdivia, Chile
Jerome Baufreton – University of Bordeaux, France
Luigi Bellocchio – University of Bordeaux, France
Giovanni Bénard – MRGM Laboratoty, Bordeaux, France
Abel Eraso Pichot – University of Bordeaux, France
Ignacio Fernandez-Moncada – University of Bordeaux, France
Marina Garcia Macia – University of Salamanca, Spain
Anna Hadjichambi – Institute of Hepathology, London, UK
Morgane Jego – University of Bordeaux, France
Daniel Jimenez – University of Salamanca, Spain
Christos Konstantinou – Institute of Hepathology, London, UK
Rodrigo Lerchundi – MIRCen, CNRS, Paris, France
Shingo Nakajima – University of Montreal, Canada
Antonio Pagano-Zottola – Institut de Biochimie Génétique et Cellulaires, Bordeaux, France
Sandrine Pouvreau – University of Bordeaux, France
Rubén Quintana-Cabrera – University of Salamanca, Spain

Course content

Topics & Techniques

The following techniques will be covered during the course:

Cultures of mouse primary astrocytes and neurons.
Bioenergetic profiles in mouse primary astrocytes and neurons using the Seahorse equipment.
Isolation of neurons and astrocytes from adult mice using immunomagnetic approach.
Flow cytometric analysis of mitochondrial membrane potential and mitochondrial ROS production in cultured primary brain cells and in acute immunomagnetically isolated brain cells.
Purification of mitochondrial fraction using differential centrifugation and immunomagnetic mitochondrial isolation approach.
Analysis of the mitochondrial respiratory chain organization using blue native gel electrophoresis from mitochondria isolated from either cultured cells, acutely isolated brain cells and brain-specific regions.
Study of real-time changes in mitochondrial membrane potential using confocal microscopy in cells expressing genetic ATP and ROS probes.
Classical techniques for the determination of common energy metabolites and enzyme activities in including the MRC complexes
Glucose and lactate metabolism in neurons: comparison of [1-13C]glucose and [3-13C]lactate metabolism in neuronal cultures, followed by 13C-NMR spectroscopy.
Glucose and lactate metabolism in astrocytes : comparison of [1-13C]glucose and [3-13C]lactate metabolism in astrocytic cultures, followed by 13C-NMR spectroscopy.
Metabolic changes during brain activity: in vivo functional MRI and MRS during whisker stimulation: visualisation of the barrel cortex and quantification of the lactate increase during brain activity in rat
Impact of metabolism for neuroprotection: longitudinal study (diffusion MRI) to follow brain lesions and regression following different injected substrates (pyruvate, glucose, lactate etc…)
Electrophysiology of hippocampal and cortical slices: comparison of population spike amplitudes and duration of activity with different substrates (glucose, ketone bodies, lactate, glucose+lactate…)
Analysis of mitochondrial respiration in ex vivo brain areas using the Oroboros technology
Mitochondrial calcium analysis by in vitro and in vivo imaging using Fiber photometry
Use of metabolic biosensors by in vitro and in vivo imaging using Fiber photometry
Impact of modulation of brain mitochondrial metabolism on behavior in mouse
Investigation of mitochondrial proteins trafficking using unconventional genetic tools
Impact of brain mitochondrial activity on whole-body energy balance.

Bordeaux School of Neuroscience, France

The Bordeaux School of Neuroscience is part of Bordeaux Neurocampus, the Neuroscience Department of the University of Bordeaux. Christophe Mulle, its current director, founded it in 2015. Throughout the year, renowned scientists, promising young researchers and many students from any geographical horizon come to the School.
The school works on this principle: training in neuroscience research through experimental practice, within the framework of a real research laboratory.

Facilities
Their dedicated laboratory (500m2), available for about 20 trainees, is equipped with a wet lab, an in vitro and in vivo electrophysiology room, IT facilities, a standard cellular imaging room, an animal facility equipped for behavior studies and surgery and catering/meeting spaces. They also have access to high-level core facilities within the University of Bordeaux. They offer their services to international training teams who wish to organize courses in all fields of neuroscience thanks to a dedicated staff for the full logistics (travels, accommodation, on-site catering, social events) and administration and 2 scientific managers in support of the experimentation.

Registration

Fee : 3.500 € (includes tuition fee, accommodation and meals)

Application closed on 1 March 2021

The CAJAL programme offers 4 stipends per course (waived registration fee, not including travel expenses). Please apply through the course online application form. In order to identify candidates in real need of a stipend, any grant applicant is encouraged to first request funds from their lab, institution or government.

Kindly note that if you benefited from a Cajal stipend in the past, you are no longer eligible to receive this kind of funding. However other types of funding (such as partial travel grants from sponsors) might be made available after the participants selection pro- cess, depending on the course.

COVID-19 update: in case the Bioenergetics for Brain Function course is postponed due to the pandemic, all applicants will have the choice to maintain their application or cancel it. Applicants who were already selected to attend will not have to reapply and will automatically be enrolled in the rescheduled course.

In addition, the Cajal Programme will not, as far as possible, request the registration fee from selected applicants until the course has been secured and confirmed. Nevertheless, should the course be cancelled before the course dates and the registration fees already collected, participants will be reimbursed.

Course sponsors

Extracellular Electrophysiology Acquisition 0321

To apply to the second edition of this course please visit this webpage

Extracellular Electrophysiology Acquisition is a Cajal NeuroKit. NeuroKits are hybrid courses that combine online lectures about fundamentals and advanced neuroscience topics, with hands-on and physical experiments.
Researchers from all over the world can participate thanks to the course material sent by post in a kit box containing all the tools needed to follow the online course.

Course overview

Any data we collect has been shaped by the system we used to record it. Understanding the tools involved in data acquisition gives you the confidence to make informed experimental design choices, and the freedom to combine and try new approaches while building your dream setup.

In this course, we will develop your understanding of electrophysiology data acquisition. In terms of hardware, you will learn how acquisition systems can amplify tiny signals and filter out noise. You’ll test this understanding by building your own system to measure muscle and heart signals. In software, you will encounter synchronisation considerations, as we add incoming datastreams and build an increasingly complex experimental design.

Don’t be discouraged if you secretly panic at the mention of capacitance, this course starts from the very basics. Advanced students can make the final project as challenging as they like.

Designed by Open Ephys and Open Ephys Production Site, this course will have an open-source flavour and encourage you to try new ideas, share your insights, and connect with the open-source community.

Course sponsors

What will you learn?

By the end of the course, you will:

be familiar with the electronic building blocks of acquisition systems
be able to model and build circuits to amplify and filter incoming signals
be able to use the Bonsai programming language to stream data and run closed-loop experiments with multiple datastreams

Faculty

Open Ephys Production Site, PT

MIT and Open Ephys, USA

Open Ephys Production Site, PT

Instructors

Aarón Cuevas López – Universitat Politècnica de València, ES

Joana Neto, FCT NOVA, PT

Jonathan P. Newman – MIT and Open Ephys, USA

Josh Siegle, Allen Institute, USA

Programme

Day 1 – Introduction

What are we trying to measure? Electrical signals in the brain and ways to record them.
How can we collect these signals without changing them? Considerations when building an acquisition system.
Using a simulator to visualise electrical circuits online and make predictions about real-world circuits.
Using the breadboard and components in your kit to test your understanding of electronics concepts.

Day 2 – Impedance

Using microcontrollers to acquire physiological data.
What is impedance? Understanding how we protect our signals while measuring them.
Understanding the function and limitations of operational amplifiers.

Day 3 – Data Acquisition

Understanding Instrumentation Amplifiers.
Simulating, building and testing low & high-pass filters.
Visualise your own EMG/ECG data using the Bonsai programming language.

Day 4 – Synchronizing Datastreams

Expanding on Bonsai – controlling cameras, receiving other datastreams.
Understanding closed-loop experiments, timestamp considerations, and synchronising datastreams.
Designing student projects and group feedback on plan.

Day 5 – Project and Open-Source Neuroscience

Open Ephys – open-source hardware & software development.
An overview of open-source community projects.
Student project presentation.

The courses will be held from 14:00 to 18:00 GMT.

Registration

Fee : 400€ (includes lectures and kit)

Application closed on 22 February 2021.

To apply to the second edition of this course please visit this webpage

To receive more information about this NeuroKit, email info@cajal-training.org

Quantitative Approaches to Behaviour

Course overview

Quantitative studies of behaviour are fundamental in our effort to understand brain function and malfunction. Recently, the techniques for studying behaviour, along with those for monitoring and manipulating neural activity, have progressed rapidly. This course provides promising young scientists with a comprehensive introduction to state-of-the-art techniques in quantitative behavioural methods. This course’s content is complementary to other summer courses that focus on measuring and manipulation neurophysiological processes.

Our focus is on methodologies to acquire rich data representations of behavior, dissect them statistically, model their dynamics, and integrate behavioral measurements with other kinds of neurobiological data. To this end, students will 1) fabricate devices for recording the behavior experimental organisms, 2) learn, under the guidance of the scientists developing these methods, the modern tools to analyze behavioral data from these organisms, and 3) in a week-long independent project develop and conduct a behavioral study of their own design, with the support and guidance of the course instructors and teaching assistants.

This 3-week course is a practical “hands-on” introduction to advanced methods in behavioural tracking and analysis. Our educational goal is to cover sufficient background such that all participants will be able to establish these techniques in their home laboratories.

In the pedagogical portion of the course (blocks 1 and 2, see below) we will use two main experimental model systems: flies (Drosophila melanogaster) and zebrafish (Danio rerio). Several days of instruction will focus on analysis of video data, and on these days, students may use videos of flies and fish, videos we provide of mammals behaving, or videos of their own organism of choice. In the student project portion of the course (block 3), students may use these experimental organisms, as well as, subject to their availability, organisms in use at the Champalimaud.

We will cover data acquisition (software, hardware, tools), preprocessing (single animal, body parts and multiple animals tracking systems), data analysis (clustering, ethograms) and modeling.

Course directors

Emory University, USA

Harvard University, USA

Champalimaud Foundation, Portugal

University of Colorado, USA

VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
OIST Graduate University, Japan

Keynote speakers

Sama Ahmed, University of Washington, USA
Kristin Branson – hhmi, Janelia Research Campus, USA
Bing Brunton – University of Washington, USA
António C. Costa, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris, France
Serena Ding – Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Germany
Giorgio Gilestro – Imperial College London, UK
Alex Jordan – Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Germany
Ann Kennedy – Northwestern University, USA
Natasha Mhatre – Western University, Canada
Ilya Nemenman – Emory University, USA
Talmo Pereira – Salk Institute for Biological Studies, USA
Sam Reiter – Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan
Barbara Webb – University of Edinburgh, UK

Instructors

Tosif Ahamed – Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, Canada
Kanishk Jain – Emory University, USA
Ugne Klibaite – Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, USA
Chantal Nguyen – BioFrontiers Institute, University of Colorado Boulder, USA
Denise Yoon, Harvard University, USA
Akira Kawano, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan
Adrien Jouary, Champalimaud Foundation, Portugal
Dean Rance, Champalimaud Foundation, Portugal
Francisco Romero, Veriff, Spain
Bruno Cruz, NeuroGEARS, UK

Course content

Schedule

Week 1

Sunday, May 22nd: Arrival & Welcome reception

Monday, May 23rd: Keynote lecture by Ben de Bivort / Afternoon tutorial: Build a rig & capture movies by Ben de Bivort & Giorgio Gilestro

Tuesday, May 24th: Keynote lecture by Giorgio Gilestro / Afternoon tutorial: Build a centroid tracker by Ben de Bivort & Giorgio Gilestro

Wednesday, May 25th: Keynote lecture by Alex Jordan / Afternoon tutorial: Multianimal idtracker.ai by Francisco Romero & Dean Rance

Thursday, May 26th: Morning tutorial by Gonzalo de Polavieja / Afternoon tutorial: Deep Learning notebooks applied to behaviour data sets by Gonzalo de Polavieja

Friday, May 27th: Keynote lecture by Talmo Pereira / Afternoon tutorial: Limb and body tracking by Talmo Pereira

Week 2

Sunday, May 29th: Keynote lecture by Kristin Branson / Afternoon tutorial: Supervised classification by Kristin Branson

Monday, May 30th: Keynote Lecture by Sam Reiter / Afternoon tutorial: Dynamics of behaviour by Greg Stephens & Tosif Ahamed

Tuesday, May 31st: Keynote lecture by Ben de Bivort & Gordon Berman / Afternoon tutorial: Unsupervised analysis of behaviour by Ugne Klibaite & Kanishk Jain

Wednesday, June 1st: Keynote lecture by Bing Brunton / Afternoon tutorial: Probabilistic models by Bing Brunton

Thursday, June 2nd: Keynote lecture by Barbara Webb & Orit Peleg / Afternoon tutorial: Braitenberg and agent-based models by Barbara Webb & Orit Peleg

Friday, June 3rd: Keynote lecture by António Costa / Afternoon: Project design

Week 3

Sunday June 5th Keynote lecture by Ilya Nemenman / Afternoon: Project development

Monday, June 6th: Keynote lecture by Serena Ding / Afternoon: Project development

Tuesday, June 7th: Keynote lecture by Ann Kennedy / Afternoon: Project development

Wednesday, June 8th: Keynote lecture by Natasha Mhatre / Afternoon: Project development

Thursday, June 9th: Keynote lecture by Sama Ahmed

Friday, June 10th: Project presentations

Saturday, June 11th: Departure

Projects

Projects from previous years:

The role of visual cues in social behaviour in flies;
Social learning in Drosophila melanogaster;
Mapping the behavioural repertoire of zebrafish larvae in response to tastants and neuroactive compounds;
Slfish: characterizing the collective behavior of larval zebrafish following acute social isolation;
Skinner’s flies: inducing superstitious microbehaviors via random operant rewards;
The role of lateralized latency asymmetry in virtual task performance;

Ideas for projects for the upcoming course:

Manifolds in dynamical representations of behavior;
Deep attention models of collective fish behavior;
Modelling behavior with different tradeoffs of accuracy and complexity using symbolic regression;
Unsupervised discovery of motifs in rodent vocalizations.

Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, Portugal

The Champalimaud Foundation is a private, non-profit organization, established in 2005 and dedicated to research excellence in biomedical science. Completed in 2010, the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown is a state-of-the-art centre that houses the Champalimaud Clinical Centre and the Champalimaud Research, with its three parallel programs – the Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme, the Physiology and Cancer Programme, and the Experimental Clinical Research Programme.
Initially focused on a system and circuit approach to brain function and behavior, the Centre expanded to incorporate molecular and cell biological expertise. The Centre comprises 26 research groups (circa 400 researchers) leading independent curiosity-based research.

Facilities
The Centre provides Facilities dedicated for Training, some in their entirety, for use by the CAJAL Advanced Neuroscience Training Programme. These include the Teaching Laboratory, a fully equipped open lab space for 20-30 students that can be dynamically reconfigured to support a full range of neuroscience courses. It also overlooks, via floor to ceiling windows, a tropical garden and the river. The experimental spaces include: Imaging Lab: A dark-room containing a full size optical table is used for advanced imaging setups (two-photon microscopy, SPIM, etc.) and custom (course-designed) optical systems.

Registration

Fee : 3.500 € (includes tuition fee, accommodation and meals)

Applications closed on 20th December 2021

Rescheduled: Advanced approaches to neuro evo-devo

This course has been rescheduled and will not be organised in 2022. Updates on the course status will be announced in the winter 2022.

Course overview

This course is a theoretical and practical training course on neurodevelopment and its evolution. It will provide an overview of the current concepts and knowledge on central nervous system development in several species, including invertebrates, mice, and humans, and their link to diseases. It will combine lectures and hands-on projects on convergent and divergent developmental processes across species at the molecular, cellular, circuit, and behavioural levels, including those relevant for human disease. It will include methods in genetics and molecular biology (e.g. genome editing), cellular neuroscience (e.g. transplantations), circuit neuroscience (e.g. live imaging) and -omics (e.g scRNA seq and bioinformatics).

This course will provide participants with a broad yet practical understanding of how the brain develops in different species, and how modern genetic approaches now allow cross-species comparisons to identify key developmental mechanisms. It is intended for PhD students and early-career postdocs.

Course directors

Faculty of Medicine,
University of Geneva, Switzerland

Paris Brain Institute, Institut du Cerveau (ICM), France

Department of Biology, NYU New York, USA

Neurocentre Magendie, University of Bordeaux, France

Keynote Speakers

Laure Bally-Cuif – Institut Pasteur, France
Sonia Garel – Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS), France
Simon Hippenmeyer – Institute of Science and Technology (IST), Austria
Oliver Hobert – Columbia University , USA
Guillermina Lopez Bendito – Instituto de Neurociencias – UMH-CSIC, Spain
Shubha Tole – Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, India

Instructors

Alexandre Baffet – Institut Curie, France
Nathan Benac – University of Bordeaux, France
Sara Bizzotto – Paris Brain Institute, France
Boyan Bonev – Helmholtz Zentrum München, Germany
Antoine de Chevigny – INMED, Univeristy of Marseille, France
Fernando García-Moreno, Achucarro Basque Center for Neuroscience, Bilbao, Spain
Juliette Godin – IGBMC Univeristy of Strasbourg, France
Isabel Holguera – New York University, USA
Nathalie Jurisch – Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience – NTNU, Norway
Karine Loulier – Institute for Neurosciences of Montpellier, France
Esther Klingler – UNIGE, Switzerland
Nikos Konstantinides – Institut Jacques Monod, France
Pierre Mortessagne – Neurocentre Magendie, Univeristy of Bordeaux, France
Homaira Nawabi – Grenoble Institute of Neuroscience, France
Stéphane Nédélec – Institut du Fer à Moulin, France
Sergi Roigg Puigros – UNIGE, Switzerland
Julie Stoufflet – Giga Liège, Belgium
Emre Yaksi – Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience – NTNU, Norway

Course content

Techniques

Crispr-CAS9 mediated genome editing to tag endogenous actin
Dissection and dissociation of mouse cortex
Fly husbandry
Human induced pluripotent stem cells culture
In utero/ex-utero electroporation
Analyses of cell position and protein expression using ImageJ
analyses of migration
ATAC-seq library preparation
Cell culture (dissociated hippocampal neurons, COS-7), cell transfection
Comparative neuroanatomy
Confocal microscopy and image analysis
Culture of organotypic brain slices
Drosophila brain dissection at L3 stage
Functional brain imaging in adult, juvenile and larval zebrafish and associated data analysis
Genetic manipulation of tTFs in neuroblasts using MARCM
Immunofluorescence
Image reconstructions and 3D analysis
Immunohistochemistry
Immunostaining
Intravitreal & in utero injections
Introduction to bioinformatics and scRNAseq analysis
Live birth-dating of neurons and functional imaging of their activity
Microtome / Vibratome sectioning
Retina, optic nerve dissection & explant culture
Spheroid generation and differentiation
Tissue freezing and cryostat slicing
Videomicroscopy,time lapse recording

See more techniques in the projects list.

Projects

Project 1 : “Live imaging of microtubule dynamics in mouse brain slices”
Project 2 : “Role of dopamine-glutamate interplay during synaptogenesis”
Project 3 : “Studying a developmental mosaic brain disorder in human cortical spheroids”
Project 4: “Histological and transcriptional analysis of isochronically labelled cortical neurons”.
Project 5: “Studying the morphological properties of developmentally- and adult-born dentate granule neurons”
Project 6: “RGC manipulation to modulate CNS regeneration”
Project 7: “Study of neuronal migration after prenatal alcohol exposure”
Project 8 : “Genome-wide profiling of the epigenome and the transcriptome of major cell types from the developing mouse cortex”
Project 9: “Emergence of intracortically-projecting neuron diversity”
Project 10 : “Studying the effect of temporal series in the proliferative capacity of Drosophila neural stem cells”
Project 11: “MAGIC Markers strategies to investigate neuron-astrocyte anatomical relationships during cortical development”
Project 12: “ Differentiation of spinal organoids and motor neuron subtypes from human induced pluripotent stem cells”
Project 13: “Inferring ligand-receptor interactions between GABAergic and Glutamatergic cells during Somatosensory Cortex Development”
Project 14: “Imaging actin cytoskeleton dynamics during radial migration of projection neurons in the mouse developing cortex”.
Project 15: “Neurogenesis in the Drosophila optic lobe by temporal patterning”
Project 16: “Fluid dynamics in the brain of zebrafish and medaka larvae”
Project 17: “Imaging function, connectivity, and development of brain circuits in zebrafish”
Project 18: “Comparative neurodevelopment of mouse and chick brains”

Bordeaux School of Neuroscience, France

Registration

Fee : 3.500 € (includes tuition fee, accommodation and meals)

Brain Organoids

Course overview

Recent advancement in the stem cell field has led to the development of novel 3D cell culture models called organoids that mimic cell type diversity and architecture during organogenesis. Brain organoids, derived from human embryonic stem cells or induced pluripotent stem cells, capture key features of the developing human brain, including stem cell pool expansion, neurogenesis, gliogenesis, synaptogenesis and cytoarchitecture formation with cellular diversity and complexity. Organoids can also be derived from patient tumor samples, such as glioblastoma, for modelling brain tumors. In less than a decade, brain organoids have already been shown to be an extremely valuable tool to understand the human brain, and novel insights have been gained in deciphering evolution, human-specific features related to the brain development and neurological diseases resulted from pathogen infection, environmental insult, or genetic mutations.

In this course, we will take a multi-disciplinary approach to show what we could learn from brain organoid technology and what the future holds. The keynote speakers are all leaders in the field and will showcase the most up-to-date knowledge of brain organoids.

Course directors

University of Pennsylvania, USA

Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany

Keynote Speakers

Alex Baffet – Institute Curie, Paris, France
Gray Camp – Roche Institute, Basel, Switzerland
Silvia Cappello – MPI Psychaitry, Munich, Germany
Mike Karl – CRTD, Dresden, Germany
Agnete Kirkeby – reNEW, Copenhagen, Denmark
Jürgen Knoblich – IMBA, Vienna, Austria
Matthias Lütolf – Roche Institute, Basel, Switzerland
Abed Mansour – The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Sergiu Pasca – Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, Stanford, US
Lorenz Studer – Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, US
Barbara Treutlein – ETH, Zurich, Switzerland

Instructors

Giovanna Brancati – BSSE, ETH Zürich, Basel, Switzerland
Clarisse Brunet – Institut Curie, Paris, France
Maren Büttner – DZNE, Bonn, Germany
Francesco Di Matteo – Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry, Munich, Germany
Sarah Frank – FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Institute of Biochemistry, Erlangen, Germany
Federica Furlanetto – FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Institute of Biochemistry, Erlangen, Germany
Yan Hong – Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
Richard O’Laughlin – Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
Laura Pellegrini – MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK
Fides Zenk – BSSE, ETH Zürich, Basel, Switzerland
Ting Zhao – Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

Course content

Topics & Techniques

The following techniques will be taught at the course:

• Generation of organoids and assembloids
• Organoids characterization
• CSF sampling from choroid plexus organoids
• Viral infection (transduction)
• Live-cell imaging (spinning-disk confocal microscope)
• Setting up of a microfluidic device
• Evaluation of the performance of microfluidic devices
• Extracellular multielectrode array (MEA) recordings
• FACS sorting
• Single cell RNA sequencing
• Generation of retina organoids
• Single cell analysis
• SCANPY framework
• Confocal microscopy
• Surgical procedure of organoid transplantation
• Animal perfusion
• Immunofluorescence
• Image analysis

Projects

Project 1: Generation and characterization of brain organoid of different regional identities and assembloids derived
Project 2: Microfluidic methods for patterning brain organoids
Project 3: Different approaches to perform Electrophysiological recordings in mature human cerebral organoids
Project 4: Using single cell RNA sequencing to decipher cellular heterogeneity of cerebral organoids
Project 5: Transplantation of hPSC-derived brain organoids into mouse brain
Project 6: A sneak peek into retinal organoids
Project 7: Generation and characterization of specialized organoids: cerebral and choroid plexus organoids
Project 8: Revealing neuronal activity in brain organoids using microelectrode array (MEA)
Project 9: Single cell analysis in brain organoids
Project 10: Investigate the Neurogenesis of Transplanted Forebrain Organoids In Vivo with Immunostaining
Project 11: To Fate or Not To Fate: live-cell imaging of neural progenitor cells to study cell fate decisions in the human developing neocortex

Get more information on the projects in the projects list file below.

Bordeaux School of Neuroscience, France

Registration

Fee : 3.500 € (includes tuition fee, accommodation and meals)

Applications closed on 30 May 2022

Course sponsors

The Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute is a science foundation dedicated to advancing our understanding of the full complexity of the brain and mind. The foundation’s mission is implemented through partnerships with world-leading universities and major scientific societies.

At Scientifica, we employ experience, collaboration, and superior design to empower you to discover the brain’s secrets and overcome neurological diseases. Our equipment is optimised for electrophysiology, multiphoton imaging and optogenetics studies.

Our highly qualified team provides first-class service and support, and our resources centre is packed with invaluable and educational content. Get in touch to see how we can help you achieve your research goals.

Course overview

Course directors

Keynote Speakers

Instructors

Course content

Topics & Techniques

Bordeaux School of Neuroscience, France

Registration

Course sponsors

Course overview

Course sponsors

What will you learn?

Faculty

Alex Leighton

Jakob Voigts

Filipe Carvalho

Instructors

Programme

Day 1 – Introduction

Day 2 – Impedance

Day 3 – Data Acquisition

Day 4 – Synchronizing Datastreams

Day 5 – Project and Open-Source Neuroscience

Registration

Course overview

Course directors

Keynote speakers

Instructors

Course content

Schedule

Sunday, May 22nd: Arrival & Welcome reception

Monday, May 23rd: Keynote lecture by Ben de Bivort / Afternoon tutorial: Build a rig & capture movies by Ben de Bivort & Giorgio Gilestro

Tuesday, May 24th: Keynote lecture by Giorgio Gilestro / Afternoon tutorial: Build a centroid tracker by Ben de Bivort & Giorgio Gilestro

Wednesday, May 25th: Keynote lecture by Alex Jordan / Afternoon tutorial: Multianimal idtracker.ai by Francisco Romero & Dean Rance

Thursday, May 26th: Morning tutorial by Gonzalo de Polavieja / Afternoon tutorial: Deep Learning notebooks applied to behaviour data sets by Gonzalo de Polavieja

Friday, May 27th: Keynote lecture by Talmo Pereira / Afternoon tutorial: Limb and body tracking by Talmo Pereira

Sunday, May 29th: Keynote lecture by Kristin Branson / Afternoon tutorial: Supervised classification by Kristin Branson

Monday, May 30th: Keynote Lecture by Sam Reiter / Afternoon tutorial: Dynamics of behaviour by Greg Stephens & Tosif Ahamed

Tuesday, May 31st: Keynote lecture by Ben de Bivort & Gordon Berman / Afternoon tutorial: Unsupervised analysis of behaviour by Ugne Klibaite & Kanishk Jain

Wednesday, June 1st: Keynote lecture by Bing Brunton / Afternoon tutorial: Probabilistic models by Bing Brunton

Thursday, June 2nd: Keynote lecture by Barbara Webb & Orit Peleg / Afternoon tutorial: Braitenberg and agent-based models by Barbara Webb & Orit Peleg

Friday, June 3rd: Keynote lecture by António Costa / Afternoon: Project design

Sunday June 5th Keynote lecture by Ilya Nemenman / Afternoon: Project development

Monday, June 6th: Keynote lecture by Serena Ding / Afternoon: Project development

Tuesday, June 7th: Keynote lecture by Ann Kennedy / Afternoon: Project development

Wednesday, June 8th: Keynote lecture by Natasha Mhatre / Afternoon: Project development

Thursday, June 9th: Keynote lecture by Sama Ahmed

Friday, June 10th: Project presentations

Saturday, June 11th: Departure

Projects

Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, Portugal

Registration

Course overview

Course directors

Keynote Speakers

Instructors

Course content

Techniques

Projects

Bordeaux School of Neuroscience, France

Registration

Course overview

Course directors

Keynote Speakers

Instructors

Course content

Topics & Techniques

Projects

Bordeaux School of Neuroscience, France

Registration

Course sponsors