How complex human cognition arises from neurons exchanging electrical impulses is one of the great questions in neuroscience and one to which I have dedicated my scientific career. During my doctoral training, I had the exciting opportunity to directly interrogate the electrical properties of live human brain cells in tissue recovered from neurosurgical procedures, revealing human features in how they process and store information. I moved to Cape Town eight years ago to join the lab of Dr Joseph Raimondo and use these techniques to study the developing circuitry of the child brain. This placed us among a handful of labs globally capable of this work and with our diverse South African cohort, we are now building a genuinely inclusive picture of how human cortical circuits develop.
In this webinar, Dr. Verhoog will:
- Describe how to generate viable sections of human brain tissue to study the electrical properties of live human neurons
- Discuss why functional maturation of human neurons is slow and continues into adulthood
- Show that human neurons mature slower than mice, even after correcting for different rates of brain development