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Dr Costas Anastassiou, Division of Biology, California Institute of Technology presents this Department of Bioengineering seminar.
Abstract: Substantial evidence supports the view that artificially applied electrical fields can affect the firing patterns of neurons. However, the possibility that the electrical fields generated by the cooperative action of neurons affect the neuronal constituents, which gave rise to collective patterns (i.e., the local field) under physiological conditions, is a controversial issue. In particular, do such fields instantiate a form of non-synaptic, ephaptic interaction between the field and individual neurons? Dr Anastassiou will present evidence that the network generated field potential can influence spike timing of individual cells that are close to firing threshold via non-synaptic, ephaptic coupling.
Biography: Costas completed his undergraduate studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich, 2001) and his doctoral studies (Ph.D.) at the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London (IC, 2006) under the supervision of Danny O’Hare and Kim Parker. During his Ph.D. Costas was also a research scholar at the Department of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) working with Martin Bazant. Since 2007, Costas is a postdoctoral fellow at the Division of Biology at Caltech studying the effect of electric fields on neurons.