Investigating Disruption of Vasomotion and Calcium Dynamics Following Electrode Implantation.

The project examined how microelectrode implantation disrupts vasomotion and smooth muscle cell calcium dynamics in the mouse visual cortex. The goal was to determine whether calcium activity and vessel motion influence one another over time, and how that coupling changes in the period following implantation. This required measuring directional influence between the two signals rather than simple co-variation, using transfer entropy to quantify how information passes between calcium and vascular traces.

The main challenges involved building analysis workflows in MATLAB around the JIDT library, selecting parameters that produced stable transfer entropy estimates, and establishing whether the resulting temporal relationships held across days and across animals. As the analysis progressed, the approach evolved from single-recording estimates toward signal-processing and statistical visualization methods that tested the robustness of the coupling rather than reporting it from one dataset. Success was defined by producing standardized, reusable pipelines that yielded consistent results across recordings and provided a framework future studies could apply to implant-induced vascular dysfunction.

A parallel effort involved building the experimental setup itself. The MVX imaging system was assembled and configured for the recordings, which included soldering the necessary connections and writing Arduino routines to drive and coordinate the hardware. Custom fixtures were designed and 3D printed to hold a transducer in stable alignment during imaging, along with molds used to cast the gel needed for the setup. This work reduced variability introduced by the apparatus and made the recordings repeatable enough to compare across sessions.