How Can We Study the Mechanisms of Memory-Related Oscillations Using Multimodal in Vivo and in Vitro Approaches?

The previous two decades of research in the electrophysiology of human memory have witnessed rapid expansion in the range of experiments, data availability, and technology being applied to unravel the underlying mechanisms of mnemonic cognition. A large portion of this work utilizes awake, behaving neurosurgical patients implanted with intracranial electrodes for the purposes of seizure mapping. However, this patient population also yields another opportunity for study. As these patients often undergo neurosurgical procedures to resect brain tissue, investigators with access to these patients can also ask novel questions related to gene expression, in vitro physiology, and brain morphology. We outline existing findings related to how multimethod data such as these can be used to understand potential gene expression networks linked with brain activity during mnemonic processing. We begin with an historical perspective on the first efforts to identify a genetic influence on brain activity patterns. We then introduce high-throughput sequencing technologies, followed by a discussion of how these techniques have been used to identify memory-relevant temporal lobe expression networks. We then review existing methodological treatments for culturing human tissue, and end with a description of the experimental manipulations that may help unravel key questions of human memory, including oscillatory activity.