The Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center invites to the CIMCYC Talks "Hippocampal neuronal networks: high-density microelectrode array stimulation for causal interrogation and data-driven control", with Dr. Elisa Tentori from the University of Padova, Italy.
Abstract
Electrical microstimulation has emerged as a powerful tool for probing, mapping, and modulating neural circuits, with implications for both fundamental neuroscience and neurotechnology. A central challenge is to predict both where stimulation is most effective and how stimulation should be delivered to drive network activity toward desired targets. In this seminar, I will present dissociated hippocampal cultures on High-Density Microelectrode Arrays (HD-MEAs) as a high-resolution platform for addressing this problem. HD-MEAs combine large-scale recording and focal stimulation on the same device, in a controlled setting that is experimentally tractable yet rich enough to display nontrivial network dynamics.
I will first show that stimulation-evoked responses in these networks are reproducible and site-specific, and that spontaneous activity contains useful information for identifying effective stimulation sites. I will then discuss a data-driven controllability framework in which short input-output training epochs with random stimulation sequences can be used to estimate the reachable manifold of activity patterns and design stimulation protocols that steer the network toward desired target states, without explicit reconstruction of the underlying circuit dynamics. This framework provides a quantitative testbed for future in vitro studies of neuromodulation and of how pharmacological manipulations reshape the space of reachable neural states.
About the speaker
Elisa Tentori is a postdoctoral researcher in Prof. Stefano Vassanelli’s lab at the Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Padova, Italy. She earned a Master’s degree in Physics from the University of Milan and completed her PhD in Neuroscience at the Padova Neuroscience Center in 2025, under the supervision of Stefano Vassanelli and the co-supervision of Michele Allegra and Samir Suweis. Her current research combines computational modeling and high-density electrophysiology to understand, predict, and control population dynamics in neuronal networks.
- Date and time: Tuesday May 12, 12:00.
- Place: Sala de Conferencias 1, CIMCYC.