Raphaël Candelier is delighted to invite you to his habilitation à diriger des recherches defense that will be held on tuesday, Febreuary 21 at 10:30 AM at the Charpak amphitheatre (Jussieu campus - access details below), during which ghe will present his work on:

 Fonctional imaging and behavior of the zebrafish larva

The defense will be in English and the jury will be composed of:

• Brice Bathellier (reviewer)
• Isaac Bianco (reviewer)
• Laurent Bourdieu (reviewer)
• Régis Lambert
• Filippo Del Bene

Abstract

My research activities at the Laboratoire Jean Perrin have been centered around the development of new experimental techniques for studying the larval zebrafish brain. This small animal is a model system, whose transparency and brain size properties make it perfectly well-suited for calcium imaging in general and Single Plane Illumination Microscopy (SPIM) in particular. During the last few years of intense collective work, we have developped in the lab many setups to explore the behavior and neural mechanisms at play in this tiny vertebrate. We have demonstrated in 2013 that it is possible to record simultaneously and without time limit some 25,000 neurons at 4 Hz, which represents an approximately 30-fold gain with respect to classical point-scanning microscopes. The SPIM technique also improves the signal to noise ratio and greatly mitigates photo-bleaching and photo-toxicity. We have then developed a SPIM setup with infrared illumination and using 2-photon fluorescence. In order to answer general questions of neuroscience we diversify our research activities and we have led behavioral studies on free-swimming animals or in a virtual reality setup.

Access

The amphitheater is located at the Saint Bernard level (ground level) of the Jussieu Campus. From the main entrance , go to the tower 22, do down one floor to reach the SB (also called RC) level. The Charpak amphitheatre is located between towers 22 and 23, door 2233-SB-02.