Francesco P.Battaglia

Professor - Head of the Lab

francesco.battaglia-at-donders.ru.nl

I had an unusual career path, with Masters and PhD in Statistical Physics and Computational Neuroscience, then moving to experimental neuroscience with my postdoc, where I learned and developed new high density recording techniques. Because of this, I can show a rare combination of expertise in statistical physics, theoretical neuroscience, statistical data analysis, neurotechnologies and experimental neurophysiology.

My work has concentrated on neural ensemble recordings in freely behaving rodents (rats and mice), with which we can record up to ~100 single neurons. I focused on the interaction between hippocampus and neocortex, in memory encoding and consolidation. We developed data analysis techniques to detect the activation of synchronized neuronal groups ('cell assemblies').

I have been awarded a ERC Advanced Grant and am a member of the Academia Europaea.

I am the coordinator of the Dutch Brain Interfaces Initiative, a “Zwaartekracht” project aimed at creating the new generation of Brain-Machine Interfaces

You can find my publications here and more information here.

Jeroen Bos

Staff Researcher

jeroen.bos2-at-donders.ru.nl

I am a staff researcher in the lab. As such I am involved with many different projects including 2-Photon, Electrophysiology (neuropixel), Virtual Reality, and Voltage Imaging. I am involved in setting up new techniques and assisting other people in the lab.
Previously, during my PhD, I did in vivo electrophysiology recordings in rats. Here we did tetrode recordings from four brain areas simultaneously while the rats performed a 2-choice visual discrimination task. Finally at the end of my PhD I worked to combine tetrode recordings with optogenetics.

Arie Kim

Post Doc

arie.kim-at-donders.ru.nl

I did my PhD study in South Korea about empathic fear in mice. I learned that genes coding for synaptic proteins can influence empathic fear in mice, and that somatostatin interneurons in the cingulate cortex modulate the expression of empathic fear.
I became curious about the cingulate neural network and now in the Battaglia lab I am imaging cells in the cingulate and retrosplenial cortices during learning using the two-photon microscope.

Guido Meijer

Post Doc

guido.meijer-at-donders.ru.nl

I am researching how the perirhinal cortex and the hippocampus work together during multisensory object recognition. To this end, I perform acute Neuropixel recordings in these regions while mice perform a spatial behavioral task in virtual reality.
I did my PhD at the University of Amsterdam where I studied multisensory integration in mice using two-photon calcium imaging. During my first post doc at the Champalimaud Foundation (Lisbon, Portugal) I switched to Neuropixel recordings, investigating how serotonin shapes global brain states.

Francesca Abela

PhD Student

francesca.abela-at-donders.ru.nl

As a PhD candidate at the Donders Centre for Neuroscience, Radboud University, I am investigating how the value of a choice is represented and flexibly updated in key brain regions, using a combination of high-density electrophysiological recording, probablistic reversal learning task in mice, and in silico modeling.

Morgane Audrain

PhD Student

morgane.audrain-at-donders.ru.nl

I first joined the Battaglia lab in January 2019 as a Master student. I developed a cheap, open-source device to detect breathing patterns in rodents non-invasively. Thanks to this project I obtained my engineering degree at ECE Paris .

In December 2019 I came back to the lab as a Research Assistant. I worked on different projects, focusing on the development of a pipeline for the pre-processing of calcium imaging data and the refining of a spike sorting software.

I started as a PhD candidate in the lab in July 2020. My research interest lies in the communication between the hippocampus and the neocortex. I combine imaging and electrophysiological recordings to study the cortico-hippocampal dialog during learning and memory consolidation.