Our laboratory is located within the research space of the Women and Children's Health Research Institute on the third floor of the Katz Group Centre for Pharmacy and Health Research at the University of Alberta.

Our laboratory is equipped with state-of-the-art in vivo electrophysiology equipment, including workstations equipped for stereotaxic surgeries, virus and drug delivery, EEG/EMG instrumentation, and EEG/EMG recordings in combination with optostimulation and cardiorespiratory measurements in vivo. Additional workstations for performing EEG/EMG recordings, optostimulation, drug delivery and measurements of respiratory parameters across sleep/wake cycles are also available. In our wet lab, we use histological techniques (tracing, immunohistochemistry, RNAscope in situ hybridization) and more recently we started analyzing genomic changes in the brain with Western blot and qTR-PCR.

Furthermore, within the WCHRI facility our laboratory staff has full access to core facilities in molecular biology (PCR machines, gel electrophoresis, spectrophotometers), histology (cryostat, vibratome, microtome), cell culture, laser capture microdissection, and microscopy (dissections scopes, fluorescent microscopes, imaging station) and Institutional core facilities operated and managed by the Faculty of Medicine at the UofA (flow cytometry, lipidomics, mass spectrometry, confocal and electron microscopy) that give us the opportunity to perform innovative and integrated experimental procedures.

Techniques that are currently used in the lab are the following:

• EEG/EMG recordings

• Plethysmography

• Optogenetics

• Chemogenetics

• Confocal microscopy/Immunohistochemistry

• RNA Scope

• qRT-PCR

• Western Blot