Cinzia Metallo

• University of Rome, Laurea, LD (Physics). Thesis project on boride superconductors.
• University of Tennessee, MS (Physics, concentration in Condensed Matter Physics).
  Thesis project on superconducting cobalt oxides.

Research Interests:

• Neuroscience
• Electrophysiology
• Electromyography (EMG)
• Micro-fabrication of biomedical devices
• X-ray scattering
• Elastic and inelastic neutron scattering

Brief introduction to my current research project:

All animals, whether vertebrates or invertebrates, must coordinate their bodies with precision during movement. However, the overall organizational principles of motor control are not yet fully understood. The main goal of my research is to elucidate the control strategies employed by the central nervous system (CNS) to select the appropriate sequence of muscle activation in order to generate a well-coordinated motor response.

In particular, my research focuses on soft-bodied motion, which requires the control of many degrees of freedom. Unlike vertebrates, whose movements are based on muscles acting on a rigid skeleton via joints and tendons, soft-bodied animals exhibit a much greater range of movements and are able to deform and orient their bodies in almost any available direction. How does a relatively simple CNS control such a variety of flexible, precise and coordinated movements in a highly multidimensional workspace?

One way to characterize the functional organization of the CNS is to identify invariant features of the motor output. The first necessary experimental step is to record simultaneously from multiple muscles to identify motor patterns during different natural behaviors. Since the ability to extract fine-scale electrical information from the convoluted electromyographic (EMG) signals depends on the detection capabilities of the recording instrumentation, I have designed and custom-fabricated a flexible and minimally invasive micro-electrode array to record EMGs in the soft-bodied animal Manduca sexta.

The micro-fabricated devices consist of a conductive layer (Cr/Au) sandwiched between two insulating layers of parylene C, a transparent polymer that meets the highest biocompatibility standards for plastic materials (ISO 10993 and USP Class VI). Parylene C was chosen due to its mechanical, electrical and physical properties. The final device is thin (<20μm) and extremely flexible, providing a highly conformal coverage of the muscle surface.  One of the fabricated devices is shown below.

The microfabrication work was carried out at the Tufts Microfabrication and Nanofabrication Facility (TMNF), located in the Advanced Technology Laboratory on the Tufts Medford campus.

Since larval Manduca muscles are generally innervated by a single motor neuron, specific motor patterns can be converted into firing patterns of identified motor neurons. In this way, the neural activity underlying downstream behaviors can be identified and characterized with single-neuron resolution. This represents not only a significant advance in the understanding of the neural basis of soft-bodied motion, but also opens the door to a number of future applications in the field of neuromechanics and soft robotics.

The experimental setup and an example of four-channel EMG recordings taken during two different behaviors (casting and searching) are show below.

Publications related to my current project:

C. Metallo, R.D.White, B.A.Trimmer, “Flexible parylene-based microelectrode arrays for high resolution EMG recordings in freely moving small animals”. Journal of Neuroscience Methods (in press)

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