Mattia Chini

University Medical Center Hamburg - Eppendorf · Developmental Neurophysiology

Throughout development, the brain transits from early highly synchronous activity patterns to a mature state with sparse and decorrelated neural activity, yet the mechanisms underlying this process are poorly understood. The developmental transition has important functional consequences, as the latter state is thought to allow for more efficient st...

Life-long brain function and mental health are critically determined by developmental processes occurring before birth. During mammalian pregnancy, maternal cells are transferred to the fetus. They are referred to as maternal microchimeric cells (MMc). Among other organs, MMc seed into the fetal brain, where their function is unknown. Here, we show...

The acute effects of anesthesia and their underlying mechanisms are still not fully understood. Thus, comprehensive analysis and efficient generalization require their description in various brain regions. Here we describe a large-scale, annotated collection of 2-photon calcium imaging data and multi-electrode, extracellular electrophysiological re...

Throughout development, the brain transits from early highly synchronous activity patterns to a mature state with sparse and decorrelated neural activity, yet the mechanisms underlying this process are unknown. The developmental transition has important functional consequences, as the latter state allows for more efficient storage, retrieval and pr...

General anesthesia is characterized by reversible loss of consciousness accompanied by transient amnesia. Yet, long-term memory impairment is an undesirable side effect. How different types of general anesthetics (GAs) affect the hippocampus, a brain region central to memory formation and consolidation, is poorly understood. Using extracellular rec...

Disturbed neuronal activity in neuropsychiatric pathologies emerges during development and might cause multifold neuronal dysfunction by interfering with apoptosis, dendritic growth, and synapse formation. However, how altered electrical activity early in life affects neuronal function and behavior in adults is unknown. Here, we address this questi...

The role of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) takes center stage among unanswered questions in modern neuroscience. The PFC has a Janus-faced nature: it enables sophisticated cognitive and social abilities that reach their maximum expression in humans, yet it underlies some of the devastating symptoms of psychiatric disorders. Accordingly, appropriate pr...

General anesthesia is characterized by reversible loss of consciousness accompanied by transient amnesia. Yet, long-term memory impairment is an undesirable side-effect. How different types of general anesthetics (GAs) affect the hippocampus, a brain region central to memory formation and consolidation, is poorly understood. Using extracellular rec...

Cognitive deficits, core features of mental illness, largely result from dysfunction of prefrontal networks. This dysfunction emerges during early development, before a detectable behavioral readout, yet the cellular elements controlling the abnormal maturation are still unknown. Here, we address this open question by combining in vivo electrophysi...

Monitoring the hypnotic component of anesthesia during surgeries is critical to prevent intraoperative awareness and reduce adverse side effects. For this purpose, electroencephalographic (EEG) methods complementing measures of autonomic functions and behavioral responses are in use in clinical practice. However, in human neonates and infants exist...

Despite inherent difficulties to translate human cognitive phenotype into animals, a large number of animal models for psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, have been developed over the last decades. To which extent they reproduce common patterns of dysfunction related to mental illness and abnormal processes of maturation is still largely...

Gamma oscillations are the neural network attribute of cognitive processing. They emerge early in life, yet their contribution to cortical circuit formation is unknown. We show that layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons entrain mouse prefrontal cortex in fast oscillations with increasing frequency across development. Chronic boosting of fast oscillations at...

Compromised brain development has been hypothesized to account for mental illness. This concept was underpinned by the function of the molecule disrupted-in-schizophrenia 1 (DISC1), which represents an intracellular hub of developmental processes and has been related to cognitive dysfunction in psychiatric disorders. Mice with whole-brain DISC1 kno...

One Sentence Summary Machine learning reveals consistent features of anesthetic states assessed by intracranial recordings in newborn mice and multichannel EEG in human neonates and infants. Abstract Monitoring the hypnotic component of anesthesia during surgeries is critical to prevent intraoperative awareness and reduce adverse side effects. For...

The long-range coupling within prefrontal-hippocampal networks that account for cognitive performance emerges early in life. The discontinuous hippocampal theta bursts have been proposed to drive the generation of neonatal prefrontal oscillations, yet the cellular substrate of these early interactions is still unresolved. Here, we selectively targe...

(table supplement 1 for Figures 1–5 and supplementary figures 1-4) Summary of statistics for all experiments. (A) Statistical testing, number of investigated mice and p-values for the analyses displayed in Figure 1. (B)–(I) Same as (A) for analyses in Figures 2–6, S1-4.

Matlab source code for the analysis of discontinuous oscillatory activity.

Background Over the last decades, psychiatric diseases have emerged as one of the biggest burdens for health care systems. The devastating symptoms are firstly detectable in adulthood, yet they seem to result from abnormal brain maturation [1]. While advancements have been made in the treatment of certain categories of symptoms, a comprehensive mec...

During the last years, a wealth of investigations has been dedicated to psychiatric diseases with developmental time course. However, the mechanisms leading to the devastating symptoms and specific adapted treatments are still poorly understood. The investigation of mouse models mimicking the etiology of disorders can expand the understanding of th...

Cognitive deficits, core features of mental illness, largely result from dysfunction of prefrontal-hippocampal networks. This dysfunction emerges already during early development, before a detectable behavioral readout, yet the cellular elements controlling the abnormal maturation are still unknown. Combining in vivo electrophysiology and optogenet...

The long-range coupling within prefrontal-hippocampal networks that account for cognitive performance emerges early in life. The discontinuous hippocampal theta bursts have been proposed to drive the generation of neonatal prefrontal oscillations, yet the cellular substrate of these early interactions is still unresolved. Here, we selectively targe...

We previously found that Mertk and its ligand Gas6, astrocytic genes involved in phagocytosis, are upregulated after acute sleep deprivation. These results suggested that astrocytes may engage in phagocytic activity during extended wake, but direct evidence was lacking. Studies in humans and rodents also found that sleep loss increases peripheral m...

Exploration of a novel environment leads to neuronal DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs). These DSBs are generated by type 2 topoisomerase to relieve topological constrains that limit transcription of plasticity-related immediate early genes. If not promptly repaired, however, DSBs may lead to cell death. Since the induction of plasticity-related genes...