Engineering a Multi-Electrode Patch Clamp System:A novel tool to quantify retinal circuits

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master_Narayanan_Sathish_2018.pdf (4.45 MB)

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Perustieteiden korkeakoulu | Master's thesis
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Date

2018-02-12

Department

Major/Subject

Bioinformatics

Mcode

SCI3058

Degree programme

Master’s Programme in Life Science Technologies

Language

en

Pages

66

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Abstract

The human brain contains almost 100 billion neurons. They form distinct neural circuits that underlie the computational power of the brain. To understand how these neural networks function, high-detail physiological recordings from multiple identified neurons within a circuit are required. However, the technical possibilities to achieve this have been limited. Simultaneous patch clamp recordings from multiple well-defined neurons at the same time would give an excellent opportunity to obtain a deeper mechanistic understanding of neural circuit function. Thus, the goal of this master’s project was to build the first state-of-the-art multi-electrode patch clamp system, along with acquisition and analysis software for retinal studies. This multi-electrode patch clamp system makes it possible for the first time to study at high physiological resolution how identified neurons in the vertebrate retina contribute to processing in small networks. The system is flexible to study other areas of the brain and can be extended to eight electrodes with only a few changes. The custom written software ensures protocol standardization for rig calibration, data acquisition, and analysis. All toolboxes are freely available as open source code, which ensures seamless collaboration between researchers and laboratories.

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Supervisor

Ala-Laurila, Petri

Thesis advisor

Stöckl, Anna

Keywords

patch-clamp, multi-electrode, retina, data analysis, data acquisition, neural circuits

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https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-201802231652

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[dipl] Perustieteiden korkeakoulu / SCI