1. Electrophysiology

• inVivo extracellular, single & multi-electrode recordings
• inVivo intracellular (sharp electrodes / patch electrodes)
• recordings of electric field (current density vector components)
• inVivo pressure ejections of pharmacological agents

in, e.g.: Hofmann et al. 2013; Metzen et al. 2015; Hofmann & Chacron 2017

Figure: Example of an inVivo intracellular recording in the ELL of Apteronotus leptorhynchus. Two pyramidal neurons were recorded simultaneously to analyse spiking and membrane potential correlations.

2. Behavior

• high-speed video based observation of spontaneous/trained behavior
• automated tracking (position, body posture, kinematics) of animals
• quantitative characterization & quantization of behavioral components based on tracking data (i.e. identification of prototypical movements and/or behavioral motifs)

in, e.g.: Pedraja et al. 2018; Hofmann et al. 2014; Hofmann et al 2017

3. Computational modelling & signal analysis

• biophysical modeling of electric fields (boundary element method, BEM)
• numerical modeling of neural activity (leaky integrate and fire model, LIF)
• analytical model of receptive field relations
• computational analysis of spatial and/or temporal signals

in, e.g.: Pedraja et al. 2018; Hofmann et al 2017; Hofmann & Chacron 2017

Figure: Illustration of a 2 layer LIF model simulating the impact of receptive field interactions (overlapping blue circles and red annuli) onto the output spike train correlation of 2 neighbouring ELL pyramidal neurons.

4. Neuroanatomy

• extracellular micropipette pressure ejections & pin injections
• intracellular dye injections
• electroporation
• histological post-processing, staining & quantitative analysis

in, e.g.: Hollmann et al. 2016;