Congratulations to Alistair Jennings who passed his viva on the 1st of August. In his work he characterized how hippocampal astrocytes respond to dopamine and identified the signalling cascades involved in generating the astrocyte Ca²⁺ response. Congratulations Dr Jennings! 🙂

DFG project grant awarded to study the “Heterogeneity of astrocyte morphology as a determinant of synaptic release” in the context of the priority program (SPP1757). The general goal of project is to reveal how astrocyte morphology and its changes modify function of synaptic terminals in the hippocampus.

Our collaborators Colin Jackson and Jason Whitfield (ANU, Canberra, Australien) joined us for a few weeks of experiments on novel optical sensors for in situ measurements of arginine in brain tissue.