Dr Josh Siegle is a senior scientist working at the Allen Institute working on large-scale electrophysiology using tools like the Neuropixels probe. He is also heavily involved in the design and distribution of Open Ephys which is an open-source electrophysiology tool.

***This podcast is sponsored by Ripple Neuro, check out their Neuroscience Research Tools here***

Top three takeaways:

• "The dark matter problem is where the number of cells that we record is almost always less than the number of cells that we actually know to be in the tissue around the electrodes. This could be because there are neurons near the electrodes that just don't fire action potentials, their action potentials look very similar to other nearby neurons, or maybe the listening radius of our electrodes is not quite as large as we would expect it to be."
• "A big advantage of working at the Allen Institute is that we have very generous internal funding from Paul Allen. And so although we do apply for grants when it makes sense, for most people at the Allen Institute, getting grant funding is not an existential threat to their research."
• Open Ephys has recently started offering virtual 1-on-1 training sessions to help people get up and running with their tools. This is aligned with their goal of making open-source tools even more accessible throughout the neuroscience community.

0:45 Ladan introduces the episode and the guest, Dr. Josh Siegle

4:00 "What is the Neuropixels probe and how does it work? Why is it important?"

8:00 What capabilities does working with IMEC bring?

11:15 How exactly were you working with IMEC?

12:30 Sponsorship by Ripple Neuro

13:15 How does the pitch of the Neuropixels probe compare to biology?

16:45 What is the Allen Institute like?

20:15 What kind of mix of people work at the Allen Institute?

21:15 "What's the stated aims of the Institute again?"

22:00 What is the Open Ephys project you had worked on before?

27:45 What is the Open Ephys training like?

29:30 Do companies love or hate Open Ehpys?

31:00 "Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to mention?"