Molecular and nanoscale materials to study and modulate neural circuits

Dysfunctional neuronal signaling underlies a wide range of psychiatric and neurological disorders. Existing therapeutics often lack clinical efficacy to reverse signaling imbalance and are both non-specific and invasive. To improve treatments of brain-related diseases will require new tools and methods to map and to repair the brain with precision and biocompatibility. In my talk, I will demonstrate how rational design of materials at the molecular and nanoscale enables new approaches to study functional and biomolecular information across the brain, and to modulate the activity of intact neural circuits with cell-type specificity. I will describe (1) the discovery of new multifunctional fixatives to render tissue transparent for mapping of circuit projections, mRNA, and proteins across the whole-brain, and (2) the engineering of magnetic nanoparticles to remotely evoke neural activity without the need for wired implants. These results, along with a discussion of future synthetic neural interfaces, aim to improve our understanding of the nervous system and to inform new therapeutic approaches for bioelectronics medicine.

Bio
Ritchie Chen is a postdoctoral fellow conducting systems neuroscience research at Stanford University with Professor Karl Deisseroth. He received his PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a BS in Bioengineering from the University of California Berkeley. His research bridges materials engineering with neuroscience to develop tools to better understand the nervous system. For his work on developing neurotechnology platforms, he has been awarded a Forbes 30 under 30 in Science and a Helen Carr Peake Research Prize.

Video transmission using zoom : https://epfl.zoom.us/j/9946495775