Handbook of in Vivo Neural Plasticity Techniques

Prof. Dr. Denise Manahan-Vaughan is head of the Department of Neurophysiology, Dean of Studies and Director of the International Graduate School of Neuroscience, and Chair of the Research Department of Neuroscience of the Ruhr University Bochum. She has served as a member of the Executive Committee and Governing Council of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies, and as speaker of the Competence Network for Neuroscience of the German Federal State of Northrhine Westphalia (NeuroNRW), and is currently speaker of the Collaborative Research Consortium on Integration and Representation of Sensory Processes (SFB 874), funded by the German Research Foundation. Her research focuses on characterization of hippocampal synaptic plasticity as a learning mechanism, primarily through investigations of two types of synaptic plasticity: long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD). Her multidisciplinary approach incorporates in vivo electrophysiology in freely moving rodents with in vitro electrophysiology using the hippocampal slice preparation, as well as behavioral analysis of learning, confocal microscopy, immunohistochemical, biochemical and molecular biological analysis. On a physiological level, her research examines how synaptic plasticity, place cells and neuronal oscillations contribute to learning and how learning drives synaptic plasticity in health and disease; this work combines in vivo electrophysiology and EEG analysis with behavioral learning models and animal models of brain disorders. Manahan-Vaughan is the author of 130 scientific publications, and her findings regarding the role of hippocampal long-term depression in memory processing have contributed to a revised understanding of how synaptic plasticity may contribute to information encoding and memory.

1. Recording hippocampal field potentials and synaptic plasticity from freely behaving rats 2. Sleep electrophysiology in rodents 3. The special case of field potential recordings and examining synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus of freely behaving mice 4. Electrophysiology along the ventral hippocampal axis 5. Single unit recordings: place cells 6. Visually guided single-cell recordings in the hippocampus of awake mice 7. Decoding neural codes in in vivo (animal) preparations 8. Extracellular recordings in subcortical limbic structures in vivo 9. In vivo electrophysiological approaches for studying head direction cells 10. Barrel cortex 11. Neurophysiology Techniques in the Avian brain: Single Units and Field Recordings 12. Optical imaging with voltage sensors - capturing TMS-induced neuronal signals using light 13. Long-term two-photon calcium imaging in the visual cortex of awake mice 14. Long-term in vivo imaging of structural plasticity in rodents 15. A guide to optogenetic applications, with special focus on behavioral and in vivo electrophysiological experiments 16. Optogenetic approaches for controlling neuronal activity and plasticity 17. Auditory cortex 18. Bridging cellular and systems memory consolidation: the role of noradrenergic modulation 19. Using molecular biology to address locus coeruleus modulation of hippocampal plasticity and learning: Progress and pitfalls 20. Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation – A Non-Invasive Way to Induce Neural Plasticity in Vivo and in Vitro 21. Repetitive sensory stimulation – A canonical approach to control the induction of human learning at a behavioural and neural Level 22. Plastic network changes during brain disease: a MR imaging approach in rodents 23. A combined fMRI and electrophysiological approach to study signal processing and signal propagation in the rodent hippocampus 24. Functional MRI of synaptic plasticity 25. MRI: an ideal translational tool to explore the neural substrate of vocal communication in songbirds 26. Tracking human engrams using multivariate analysis techniques 27. Neural codes in human 28. Invasive Brain-Computer Interfaces and Neural Recordings from Humans