Sebastian obtained a Master’s degree (‘Diplom’) in Biology, for his research at the Department of Microsystems Engineering (University of Freiburg), transferring a concept of learning to low-level stimulus/response relationships in cortical networks in vitro. During his research towards a PhD in Physiology with Prof. Shimon Marom at the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa), he studied how synaptic processes can contribute to long-term single neuron response fluctuations. Establishing a method that caters to stable long-term activation of a single neuron in vitro through input from a synaptic population, he was able to describe response dynamics across various time scales.
During his first postdoc with Prof. Mathew Diamond in the Tactile Perception and Learning Lab in SISSA (International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste), he extended his interest on trial-to-trial variability to the behavioral and systems level. He established controlled optogenetic experimentation for studying perception and working memory in freely moving rats, developing state-of-the-art tools together with a team of engineers (www.Cynexo.com). After developing a single-stimulus tactile categorization task in rats, he was able to gain some insights into the dynamics of history-dependent perceptual judgments and on context dependent perception of time, bringing up some new concepts and simple mechanistic models
Relevant Writing:
Hachen I.*, Reinartz S.*, Brasselet R., Stroligo A., Diamond M.E. (2021). Dynamics of history-dependent perceptual judgment, Nat Commun 12, 6036 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26104-2.
Toso A., Reinartz S., Pulecchi F., Diamond M.E. (2021). Time coding in rat dorsolateral striatum, Neuron, ISSN 0896-6273, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2021.08.020.
Reinartz S.*, Fassihi A.*, Paz L., Pulecchi F., Gigante M., Diamond M.E. (2021). The sensory code within sense of time, bioRxiv, doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.07.29.454157.
Reinartz S.*, Ravera M.*, Fontanini M., Diamond M.E. (2021). Two distinct mechanisms for time perception are selected by context, In: Cosyne Abstracts 2021.
Reinartz S.*, Hachen I.*, Brasselet R., Stroligo A., Diamond M.E. (2020). A mechanistic model of history-dependent perceptual judgments on various time scales, Bernstein Conference 2020, doi: 10.12751/nncn.bc2020.0212.
Reinartz S.*, Toso A.*, Fassihi A.*, Paz L., Pulecchi F., Diamond M.E. (2019). Perceiving the duration of a vibration: psychophysics, leaky integrator model, optogenetic testing, Cosyne Abstracts 2019, Lisbon, PT.
Reinartz S. (2019). Long-Term Activity Dynamics of Single Neurons and Networks, In: Chiappalone M., Pasquale V., Frega M. (eds) In Vitro Neuronal Networks. Advances in Neurobiology, vol 22. Springer, Cham.
Kaufmann M., Reinartz S., Ziv N. (2014). Adaptation to Prolonged Neuromodulation: An Invariable Return to Network Synchrony, BMC Biol. 12:83. doi: 10.1186/s12915-014-0083-3.
Reinartz S., Biro I., Gal A., Giugliano M., Marom S. (2014). Synaptic dynamics contribute to long-term single neuron response fluctuations, Front. Neural Circuits 8:71.