The human central nervous system contains billions of neurons that communicate through the propagation of action potentials along the cell membrane and the release, transport, and metabolism of neurochemicals at synapses. Technologies for in vivo electrophysiology have been intensively studied, with recent examples of Neuropixels 2.0 and Neural Matrix for recording over several thousand channels.
Compared with these tools for electrophysiological recordings, the technologies for real-time neurochemical monitoring are very limited. Neurochemicals, however, have been found to play critical roles in reward signaling, learning, motor control, and treatments of neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s disease.
Dr. Yi Zhang,
University of Connecticut
In this presentation, I will present our recent developments on implantable bioelectronics and microfluidics to unlock brain chemistry, including implantable aptamer-based biosensors for real-time neurochemical monitoring and a set of implantable microfluidic devices for membrane-free neurochemical sampling with cellular spatial resolution in freely moving animals. These new sets of implantable bioelectronics create opportunities for neuroscientists to understand where, when, and how the release of neurochemicals modulates diverse behavioral outputs of the brain.
Dr. Yi Zhang is an associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Collins Professor in Engineering Innovation at the University of Connecticut (UConn), Storrs. He received his Ph.D. degree in chemical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2016, where he was awarded Waldemar T. Ziegler Award for Best Research Paper in Chemical Engineering and Exemplary Academic Achievement Award. He did his postdoc training in Prof. John A. Rogers group at Northwestern University.
His research program has been recognized by multiple awards, including the NSF CAREER Award, the Biomedical Engineering Society Career Development Award, UConn-AAUP Research Excellence Award –Early Career, Director’s Award for Faculty Excellence from the Polymer Program at UConn, and UConn BME Early Career Faculty Scholar Award. For more information, see: https://zhangyigroup.com/.