Organizers
Juliet Gopinath, University of Colorado, USA
David Nolte, Animated Dynamics Inc., USA
Joseph Mastron, TOPTICA Photonics, Inc., USA
The AT&T Topical Review focuses on optical methods and nanotechnology needed for the advancement of neuroscience and biology and coherent properties of light. One major goal of neuroscience is identifying the neural codes, relations between the activity of neurons and behavior, behind complex brain functions. Advanced imaging and microscopy have made gigantic advances in the last two decades with the advent of super-resolution techniques, encoded sensors of voltage and calcium and optogenetics and nanoparticles that enable activation and de-activation of neurons on the millisecond time scale. Neuromodulation promises to provide many rewarding scientific insights especially with advances that allow one to probe single action potentials for readout and manipulation using fast scanning techniques. As an alternate to optogenetics, a large variety of nanoparticles have also captured interest for neural activation and inhibition. New techniques such as scanning ion-conductance microscopy, iterative expansion microscopy and the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence enable more information to be measured.
The coherent properties of light provide an essential interferometric resource for probing the complex states of living matter. Examples of the use of coherence-domain techniques in the biosciences includes interference microscopy, low-coherence backscatter, digital holography (DH), intracellular Doppler spectroscopy and coherence-domain depth-gated sectioning through Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT). Many of these techniques can be combined into multimodal detection and imaging modalities. This symposium seeks to explore the broad range of applications of coherence-domain techniques in biological and biomedical research.