{"407701":{"#nid":"407701","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Neuro Design Suite Open for Business","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EThe Parker H. Petit Department of Bioengineering and Bioscience recently unveiled its newest core facility. But even before its official grand opening earlier this year, the Neuro Design Suite (NDS) was having an important impact on the work of researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELast year, when Craig Forest and Garrett Stanley applied for grant funding through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for President Obama\u2019s BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies), they made sure to include the Neuro Design Suite in their description of available facilities. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIt\u2019s because facilities were among the important five criteria on which these grant proposals were scored by NIH, who awarded the Forest\/Stanley research team $1.5 million as part of the first wave of BRAIN Initiative funding. Part of NIH\u2019s reasoning on this score is that the NDS is a state-of-the-art facility with some of the best research tools available.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cThey want to know, \u2018does your team have adequate facilities to conduct this research?\u2019 So, it made a great impression,\u201d says Forest, associate professor of bioengineering in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. \u201cThe modern tools of neuroscience are allowing researchers unprecedented access to the living brain at work. These tools allow measurements at the level of single cells, and the connections between them.\u201d\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELike all core facilities, the Neuro Design Suite are shared resources, a high-tech \u201csandbox\u201d for engineers and scientists to try out their novel inventions in a controlled setting with all the necessary equipment at hand. So far, a number of different researchers from different disciplines have utilized the tools.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u201cHaving a shared facility that can support multiple grants and multiple [principal investigators] is absolutely essential,\u201d Forest says. \u201cWe\u2019re excited that these tools invented for neuroscience could be brought to bear on entirely different problems.\u201d\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn other words, you don\u2019t have to be a neuroscientist to reap the research benefits of the Neuro Design Suite. Assisting researchers who use the facility is lab manager Bo Yang, who can sit down with a scientist and help design experiments suitable to their needs or discipline.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cBo has recorded the electrical activity of 2,500 brain cells,\u201d says Forest. \u201cWe\u2019re fortunate to have one of the world\u2019s experts working with researchers.\u201d \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe suite features three major rigs that allow researchers to perform manual and\/or automated \u003Cem\u003Ein vitro, in vivo\u003C\/em\u003E patch clamping and \u003Cem\u003Ein vivo\u003C\/em\u003E extracellular electrophysiology recordings. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Q-Scientifica SliceScope within\u0026nbsp;the \u003Cem\u003Ein vitro\u003C\/em\u003E\u0026nbsp;patch clamping rig is a compact upright microscope equipped with a fully-motorized fixed stage, various electrode manipulators, a wide range of Olympus objectives and an LED system to meet the demands of electrophysiology study.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe electromagnetically shielded\u0026nbsp;\u003Cem\u003Ein vivo\u003C\/em\u003E\u0026nbsp;extracellular electrophysiology rig is constructed with various elements, including Zesis surgical microscopes, a 128-channel Tucker Davis Technologies data acquisition system (RZ2), Kopf stereotaxic frames, and DC temperature controllers to enable stable, reliable and high-quality recordings. Also, a complete LED driver system (Thorlabs) was equipped to this rig to facilitate optogenetic \u003Cem\u003Ein vivo\u003C\/em\u003E experiments.\u003Cbr \/\u003EAutomatic patch clamping devices (autopatchers) are also attached to both\u0026nbsp;\u003Cem\u003Ein vitro\u003C\/em\u003E\u0026nbsp;and\u0026nbsp;\u003Cem\u003Ein vivo\u003C\/em\u003E\u0026nbsp;patch clamping rigs to obtain high yield and high quality whole cell recordings. \u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EForest and Stanley, professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME), were awarded BRAIN Initiative funding from the NIH for their project entitled, \u201c\u003Cem\u003EIn-vivo\u003C\/em\u003E circuit activity measurement at single cell, sub-threshold resolution,\u201d research that could only happen with the best tools available.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cWe can use these tools not only to record what\u2019s happening in cells, at the level of a single cell, but also in cells that are in two different brain regions simultaneously,\u201d says Forest. \u201cIn each region we can record activity within a single cell, at the sub-threshold resolution of a single cell. No one\u2019s been able to do that before. We can record cells talking to each other in a living brain.\u201d\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ECONTACT:\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/node\/jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EJerry Grillo\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECommunications Officer II\u003Cbr \/\u003EParker H. Petit Institute for\u003Cbr \/\u003EBioengineering and Bioscience\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":[{"value":"Newest core facility giving researchers unprecedented access to the brain"}],"field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ENewest core facility giving researchers unprecedented access to the brain\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Newest core facility giving researchers unprecedented access to the brain"}],"uid":"28153","created_gmt":"2015-05-28 00:36:49","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:18:21","author":"Jerry Grillo","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2015-05-28T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2015-05-28T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"407691":{"id":"407691","type":"image","title":"Neurons","body":null,"created":"1449254168","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 18:36:08","changed":"1475895132","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:52:12","alt":"Neurons","file":{"fid":"202154","name":"-1_8.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/-1_8_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/-1_8_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":1274734,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/-1_8_0.jpg?itok=6ByD52XH"}},"407681":{"id":"407681","type":"image","title":"neuro design ribbon cutting","body":null,"created":"1449254168","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 18:36:08","changed":"1475895132","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:52:12","alt":"neuro design ribbon cutting","file":{"fid":"202153","name":"ribbon_2.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/ribbon_2_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/ribbon_2_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":524259,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/ribbon_2_0.jpg?itok=imOm55N8"}}},"media_ids":["407691","407681"],"groups":[{"id":"1292","name":"Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB)"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"126591","name":"go-NeuralEngineering"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39441","name":"Bioengineering and Bioscience"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/node\/jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EJerry Grillo\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECommunications Officer II\u003Cbr \/\u003EParker H. Petit Institute for\u003Cbr \/\u003EBioengineering and Bioscience\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}