Multimodal characterization of the effects of stimulation on the human brain ex vivo and in vivo.

In particular, it is unknown how brain stimulation impacts gene expression in acute and chronic temporal periods. Although therapeutic approaches like deep brain stimulation are becoming more widely used, it is impossible to study stimulation-induced genetic changes without tissue samples which at best could be collected post-mortem.

To overcome these extremely limiting circumstances, we have implemented a multi-part experimental design involving single cell resolution RNA and ATAC sequencing of human cortex that has been stimulated in several paradigms. In the first, acute human cortex slices are stimulated with a high-density microelectrode array, which allows us to track how neural activity changes after stimulation together with genomic changes.