Speakers
Description
A clear model - hence, a solid control - of the effects of microstimulation in neuronal networks is still lacking, hampering the great potential of this technique as a tool to probe the networks' structure and dynamics. Bridging computational modeling and an innovative experimental paradigm, we developed a model of the effects of single-site microstimulation in hippocampal cultures plated on high-density microelectrode arrays. A main result of our study is that the cultures' perturbome (stimulus-response map) is fundamentally shaped by recurrent connectivity and short-term adaptation. Leveraging our findings, we recently showed that one can design stimulation sequences to elicit specific activity states in the culture, in a controlled and repeatable way.
Michele Allegra is a physicist with a broad interest for neuroscience. Upon completing a Ph.D in quantum physics at the University of Turin, he moved into neuroscience. He was PostDoc at SISSA, Trieste (2015-2021), where he worked on a data-driven analysis of dynamically changing brain networks, and at the Timone Institute for Neuroscience in Marseilles (2018-2021), where he worked on brain network disruption in stroke. Since 2021, he is a non-tenured researcher at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Padova, where he focuses on analyzing and modeling the relation between spontaneous and evoked neural activity.
Elisa Tentori completed a Ph.D in Neuroscience at the University of Padova in 2025. She is currently a PostDoc in Prof. Vassanelli’s Lab at the Department of Biomedical Sciences in Padova. Her research focuses on the modeling of in vitro neuronal activity.
