Physics Colloquium: “Understanding the Brain with Adaptive Optics”

Emily Gibson

University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus

Abstract: Understanding how the brain’s complex neural networks perform critical functions and govern behavior, cognition and intuition is a key goal of neuroscience and can lead to improved treatment for various neurological disorders. The development of new tools for studying the brain is critical in this effort. Light Microscopy has greatly expanded the capabilities for minimally invasive cellular-level biological studies and in combination with genetically encoded fluorescent indicators allows unprecedented real-time imaging of action potentials in individual neurons in a network. In this talk, I will discuss recent work in my lab on the development of miniature fiber-coupled microscopes for 3-D imaging using adaptive optics and their applications for studies in freely moving and behaving animals. Additionally, I will discuss how adaptive optics for control of light patterning combined with optogenetics makes it possible to modulate neuronal activity allowing new studies of how neural circuits govern behavior.

All lectures are via Zoom.
If you would like to be invited to attend the colloquium via Zoom, please contact Dan Adams (daadams@mines.edu) or Serena Eley (serenaeley@mines.edu) for the link.

Dr. Gibson is an associate professor in the department of Bioengineering at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus with a joint appointment in the Neuroscience program.  She earned her PhD in Physics from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a specialization in nonlinear optics.  She was subsequently a National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences postdoctoral fellow in biophysics, studying protein dynamics with nonlinear optical spectroscopy.  Since becoming a faculty member, she has focused on development of optical technologies for clinical applications and biomedical research.