Biography

Dr. Zhiwen Ye is a Principal Investigator at the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation (SMART), Shenzhen, China. He received his PhD in Neuroscience from Imperial College London, followed by postdoctoral training at the Francis Crick Institute and the University of Washington, where he worked with Dr. Nicholas Steinmetz. His research spans the neural circuit mechanisms of brain states, large-scale neural recording technology and brain-wide population dynamics. He co-led the development of Neuropixels Ultra, an ultra-high-density silicon probe (Neuron, 2025), and led the discovery of brain-wide rotating waves (Science, 2026). 

Talk Title: From Single Spikes to Brain-wide Dynamics: Recording Neural Activity with Neuropixels Ultra and Widefield Imaging

How can we record neural activity with enough resolution to see both single neurons and their brain-wide coordination? I will present two complementary approaches. First, Neuropixels Ultra (NP Ultra), a silicon probe with 6 μm site spacing and over 10× higher density than previous Neuropixels probes, delivers a >2-fold increase in neuronal yield, robust detection of small-footprint axonal signals across species, and improved waveform-based cell-type classification. In a separate study, combining Neuropixels electrophysiology with cortical widefield imaging revealed that neural activity in awake mice is frequently organized as rotating waves that propagate across somatotopic maps. Intriguingly, local axons within sensory cortex are arranged in a matching circular architecture. Rotating waves are coordinated across hemispheres and between cortex and subcortex, and are selectively recruited during sensorimotor behavior. Together, these advances point toward a new framework for studying brain-wide dynamics of behavior at single-neuron resolution.