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;