Earlier this year, 52 awards were made to students and fellows in neuro labs across Harvard, to support travel for advanced training and the sponsorship of visiting scholars. This month we highlight the experiences of two awardees who hosted collaborators for technology development projects:

Vicente Parot, graduate student in the lab of Adam Cohen, invited Carlos Sing-Long, assistant professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, to collaborate on the development of optical and optogenetic methods to map neuronal function across large brain regions with single-cell resolution. Parot specializes in biophysics and Sing-Long in applied math and statistics. During their time together, they were able to achieve a 100-fold increase in time resolution for their use of new technique called “Hadamard microscopy”, which Parot had developed earlier.

Rachel Ross, assistant neuroscientist in the lab of Kerry Ressler, brought collaborator Christian Burgess, a new assistant professor at the University of Michigan, back to Boston to improve methods to study in vivo a population of prefrontal cortex neurons involved in feeding decisions. Said Ross:”I have been building a piece of equipment that makes this work possible, and cost-effective, and Christian’s technical help and advice has been invaluable. This technology, called fiber photometry, provides an approach that allows for bulk calcium-dependent activity recording of genetically identified neurons in behaving mice.”