From the essentials to cutting edge techniques in optical imaging and electrophysiology 

OPTICAL IMAGING AND ELECTROPHYSIOLOGICAL RECORDING IN NEUROSCIENCE

A 13-day residential course of lectures, demonstrations and practical work (5-9 May 2020 inclusive)

LECTURES AND PRACTICALS

Lectures and practicals held at the Université Paris Descartes, 45 Rue des Saints Peres, 75006 Paris, France. Three days of demonstrations and lab visits are run at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (IBENS), Brain and Spine Institute (ICM) and Pasteur Institute. World-expert lecturers and instructors come from Paris, France, Europe, the world.

FEES

The course fee will be 1500 Euros per student, with a reduced fee of 1100 Euros for students who do not require accommodation. Special arrangements exist for attending lectures only and for students from contributing institutions.

HANDS-ON

The course offers intensive practical sessions over six days, with dedicated instructors and setups assembled with the latest equipment. Students choose 3 techniques from: patch-clamping in slices, field recordings, calcium imaging, voltage-senstive dyes, Neuropixel, photolysis, optical bench and analogue and digital electronics.

BOARD AND LODGING

Accomodation in a student residence is available. Breakfast and lunch will be provided at the course (except on the middle Sunday). All students and lecturers are invited to the welcome and farewell banquets.

DEMONSTRATIONS

There are numerous demonstrations of advanced techniques, including: confocal microscopy, high-speed two-photon imaging, in vivo imaging, in vivo patch-clamp recording, TIRF imaging, super-resolution imaging, extracellular recording in vivo, viral transfection methods, wavefront engineering.

PARISIAN RESEARCH SOCIAL

Make the most of your stay in Paris to learn about its extensive research community and meet with local scientists to explore opportunities for collaboration, post-docs and careers. A social evening will be organised to connect interested students and researchers. 
TESTIMONIALS

All the feedback from the 2018 class (will be updated with 2019 soon)

Loved the practical approach to the theory we learned. Inspiring lecturers, instructors and admin people and a supernice student group! Will highly recommend it to fellow students back home!

The Paris neuro course is amazing, very great teachers, interesting students and great in-depth curriculum

The ENP spring course was extremely beneficial. As a graduate student coming from a molecular biology background but had joined a neuroscience lab, it was very helpful to learn more of the technical aspects and theoretical background to concepts I see everyday in lab but did not necessarily understand. I now feel more equipped to handle the acquisition and analysis of electrophysiological and optical data! It was an awesome experience and I learned from the top experts of the field!

Perfect in quality, energy, duration, diversity, topic. Thank you, really.

Amazing school. I recommend it to anyone interested in optics and ephys.

I totally enjoyed the breadth of knowledge taught in the workshop -from the very basics upto the state-of-the-art. The instructors were extremely good at breaking down complex concepts into very simple terms. The hands-on workshop were elaborate and valuable too. Overall, I would highly recommend it to all budding neuroscientists.

LOVED the course, I learned so many things I didn’t know existed.

I think the main take home from the course has been the confidence to approach, and think about tinkering with electrophysiological and optical setups and topics for my experiments. Spending two weeks with like minded people in a beautiful city isn’t bad either.

Great experience. Really enjoyed it all!!

I absolutely loved the course. It’s great to pick apart an amplifier and a microscope and really understand the instruments I work with. I look forward to upgrade my microscope when I go back to the lab. I would highly recommend any PhD student in imaging to do this course in the beginning of the PhD!

Very helpful for new PhD students to get necessary basic and practical knowledge imaging and ephys experiments.

I enjoyed the course very much. I could definitely broaden and intensify my knowledge on neurophysiological techniques. In particular, instructors and speakers seemed to be really interested in conveying information and expertise. They were very open to discuss and answer questions.

Great course that focuses on technical details of building and using microscopes for neuroscience -from tracking small molecules to functional imaging of large neuronal populations! Rally understanding the techniques helps you flexibly adapt it to your purpose in the future!

Organizers

David Ogden

Paris Descartes

Joana LOURENCO

ICM

Cathie Ventalon

IBENS

Boris Barbour

ENS

Federico Trigo

Paris Descartes

Adrien Schramm

Course manager

Brandon Stell

Paris Descartes

Jonathan Bradley

ENS

Stéphane Dieudonné

ENS

David Digregorio

Pasteur

Staff

Servane Le Metayer

Paris Descartes

Gilles Dewailly

Paris Descartes

Luc Tamisier

Paris Descartes

Hervé Suaudeau

Paris Descartes