Research teams and research areas

The Institut de la Vision brings together nearly 300 researchers in 18 research units specialized in ophthalmological pathologies. At the forefront of scientific innovation, these units conduct translational research aimed at developing cutting-edge technological solutions and therapeutic innovations for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of these pathologies. Organized around five strategic research axes, the teams of the Institut de la Vision cover a wide range of topics, from the molecular physiology of vision to innovative therapeutic approaches.

Wavefront Engineering Microscopy

The research focus of the group has a dual technological and neuroscientific objective. Firstly, it involves advancing all-optical methodologies by integrating single and multiphoton excitation with spatiotemporal wave-front shaping, holographic illumination, compressed sensing, and probe engineering. Secondly, utilizing this unique combination to investigate, at unprecedented precision, neuronal circuits crucial for visual perception.

Valentina Emiliani
View profile

Presentation

The Wave-front engineering Microscopy group is an interdisciplinary team composed by physicists, engineers, biophysicists and neurophysiologists. The group has pioneered the use of wave front shaping for all-optical brain manipulation, in a few very early and breakthrough papers, demonstrating spatiotemporal wave front shaping approaches such as computer-generated holography, generalized phase contrast and temporal focusing, and showing that such methods can be used to sculpt the excitation volume with a shape perfectly tailored on the selected target. 

The combination of these approaches with newly developed optogenetics actuators and high-power amplified lasers enables the control of single or multiple targets independently in space and time in mm3 volume at cellular resolution and millisecond temporal precision.  We termed this combination of approaches, circuits optogenetics The unprecedented spatiotemporal precision of circuit optogenetics is currently being utilized by my team and other labs worldwide in a wide range of experimental paradigms. Among the collaborative projects of my group with other neuroscience laboratories, we can mention the use of circuits optogenetics for high-throughput connectivity mapping of neuronal circuits in zebrafish or the visual cortex, for the optical manipulation of retinal circuits, and for the in vivo demonstration of hub cells in neuronal circuits during development.

Combining single photon holography and endoscopy we were also able to demonstrate simultaneous photostimulation and functional imaging with near-cellular resolution in freely moving mice and more recently we have been able to make this approach also compatible with two-photon excitation. 

We have recently demonstrated that scanless two-photon microscopy also provides important advantages for two-photon voltage imaging. Specifically, we have shown that, in combination with temporal focusing, parallel illumination enables high-contrast, high-resolution in vitro and in vivo voltage imaging in densely labelled preparation (mice cortex and zebrafish larvae) expressing GFP and rhodopsin based genetically encoded voltage indicator. 

Our current research activity focuses on advancing even further the development of these technologies and on the use of the developed technologies for the investigation of the mechanisms regulating functional connectivity and signal processing across the main visual pathways in mice, non-human primates and zebrafish larvae. 

Research areas

  • Multiphoton scanless optogenetics
  • Two-photon holographic endoscopy
  • Two-photon scanless voltage imaging
  • All-optical circuits manipulation: circuits optogenetics
  • Holographic vision restauration
  • Dissemination

Team members

Valentina Emiliani
View profile
Eirini Papagiakoumou
View profile
Benoit Forget
View profile
Dimitrii Tanese
View profile
Nicolo Accanto
View profile
Emiliano Ronzitti
View profile
Vincent De Sars
View profile
Christophe Tourain
View profile
Valéria Zampini
View profile
Soledad Dominguez Research Engineer
View profile
Thi Phuong Ung
View profile
Ruth Sims
View profile
Imane Bendifallah
View profile
Aysha Abdul Gafoor
View profile
Rafael Castillo Negrete
View profile
Laurence Tricot
View profile
François Blot Postdoctoral researcher
View profile
Christiane Grimm
View profile
Antonio Lorca
View profile
Chung Yuen Chan
View profile
Cécile Telliez
View profile
Anastasiia Maslianitsyna
View profile
Ornella Riehm
View profile
Marie-Louise Contreras
View profile
Dimitri Decombe
View profile
Tristan Liu PhD Student
View profile
Polina Kostina PhD Student
View profile

Scientific publications

Below you will find the latest scientific publications in this field: Wavefront Engineering Microscopy.

Scanless two-photon voltage imaging

Ruth Sims*, Imane Bendifallah*, Christiane Grimm, Aysha Mohamed-Lafirdeen, Xiaoyu Lu, François St-Pierre, Eirini Papagiakoumou*, and Valentina Emiliani*
Nature Communications, 2024

Ultrafast Light Targeting for High-Throughput Precise Control of Neuronal Networks

Giulia Faini*, Dimitrii Tanese*, Clément Molinier, Cécile Telliez, Massilia Hamdani, F. Blot, Christophe Tourain, Vincent de Sars, Filippo Del Bene, Benoît C. Forget, Emiliano Ronzitti #, and Valentina Emiliani
Nature Comm, 14, 1888 (2023)

A flexible two-photon endoscope for fast activity imaging and cell-precise optogenetic photo-stimulation neurons in freely moving animals

Nicolò Accanto*, François G. C. Blot*, Antonio Lorca Camara*, Valeria Zampini, Florence Bui, Christophe Tourain, Noam Badt, Ori Katz, and Valentina Emiliani
Neuron, Jan 18;111(2):176-189.e6 (2023), Epub 2022 Nov 16

Multiplexed temporally focused light shaping for high-resolution multi-cell targeting

Nicolò Accanto, Clément Molinier, Dimitrii Tanese, Emiliano Ronzitti, Zachary L. Newman, Claire Wyart, Ehud Isacoff, Eirini Papagiakoumou and Valentina Emiliani
Optica (2018) 5, 1478-1491

Temporally precise single-cell resolution optogenetics

O. Shemesh, D. Tanese, V. Zampini, L. Changyang, P. Kiryln, E. Ronzitti, E. Papagiakoumou, E.S. Boyden, V. Emiliani
Nature Neuroscience 20 (2017) 1796–1806

Job offers

No job offers

Contact

Fields marked with an asterisk (*) are mandatory.