Please consider attending the following: MATERIALS ENGINEERING SEMINAR "Towards the Development of an In Vitro Electro-Magnetic (EM) Platform to Study Neural Mechanisms" By Luis Regalado Bermejo Purdue MSE Preliminary Exam Advisor: Professor Ernesto E. Marinero ABSTRACT Electro-Magnetic (EM) stimulation techniques such as Transcranial Magnetic stimulation (TMS) have shown promising results towards the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, however, there is an incomplete understanding of the physical mechanisms responsible for said effects. Current advances in the study of EM stimulation have found evidence of cellular-level effects caused as a result of this stimulation that have the potential to relate them towards changes in internal neural mechanisms such as synaptic plasticity. However, to unambiguously establish correlation between EM stimulation, neuron response and synaptic processes, the development of new techniques is required to probe directly within neuron and at synaptic connections, the coupling of applied electric and magnetic fields with fundamental processes responsible for neuron response such as action potential and ionic transport processes. This may be achievable with the proposal of in vitro EM stimulation platforms that can stimulate neurons directly and measure their effects on quantifiable sources such as ionic potentials or genetic expression. In addition, the miniaturization of these techniques has the potential of optimizing parameters of interest such as the magnetic field intensity and frequency spike train delivery which may help improve current stimulation therapies. This platform has the potential for providing interesting approaches towards the study of neurons with the ability to stimulate cells in a non-invasive manner, allowing the integration of different characterization technique, and to provide direct measurements of factors that can be related to synaptic plasticity. Date: Tuesday, January 21, 2020 Time: 9:00 A.M. Place: ARMS 1021