Hand-drawn brain with dendritic branches

Lowet Lab

Understanding circuits,
improving therapies

We study how neurons and circuits coordinate their activity during behaviour, using voltage imaging, electrophysiology and computational analysis. A central aim is to understand how deep brain stimulation restores circuit function in conditions such as drug-resistant epilepsy and Parkinson's disease.

Department of Neuroscience · Erasmus MC · Rotterdam, the Netherlands

Hand-drawn mouse standing on a live voltage trace

We study how neurons communicate during behaviour, and how brain stimulation can restore that communication in disease.

An interdisciplinary team using voltage imaging, electrophysiology and computational analysis to understand neural circuit communication and the mechanisms of deep brain stimulation.

Research directions

Two questions we focus on

Drug-resistant epilepsy

How seizures emerge and spread across cells, regions and time

In drug-resistant epilepsy, we track single-cell and population voltage dynamics across different neuronal cell types and brain regions, and across multiple timescales — within individual seizures, across successive seizures, and over the course of epileptogenesis. To do this we combine multimodal recordings — voltage imaging, electrophysiology, locomotion kinetics and behaviour — to follow how normal circuit communication breaks down.

Read more →
Drug-resistant epilepsy
Parkinson's disease

How deep brain stimulation acts on the basal ganglia

Deep brain stimulation is a powerful therapy for Parkinson's disease whose mechanism is still poorly understood. We study how stimulation, from conventional to kilohertz frequencies, reshapes activity in the basal ganglia circuits affected in the disease, from single-cell responses to population dynamics. We combine multimodal recordings — electrophysiology, locomotion kinetics and behaviour — working toward more precise and effective stimulation.

Read more →
Parkinson's disease

Approach

How we do it

Behaving animals

Recordings in freely moving and head-fixed mice, linking circuit activity to what the animal is doing.

Voltage imaging

Genetically encoded voltage indicators read membrane potential optically — spikes and subthreshold dynamics at millisecond resolution.

Multi-site fiber photometry single-cell voltage imaging platform
Our multi-site, high-speed fiber-photometry platform for single-cell voltage imaging
The Lowet Lab group in the Erasmus MC atrium

People

A curious, interdisciplinary team

Biologists, physicists and engineers working together across voltage imaging, electrophysiology and computation — based in the Department of Neuroscience at Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Meet everyone →

Life in the lab

Beyond the microscope

Illustrated portrait of the Lowet Lab

Featured publication

2026

Tracking multi-site somatic voltage dynamics via high-speed fiber photometry

Sukanya Chakraborty, Maxime van Veghel, Athanasia Tzanou, Zhongyi Li, Denis Torbin, Eric Lowet · bioRxiv · Preprint

All publications →

News

Latest from the lab

Jun 2026

New preprint on fiber-photometry voltage imaging

Our method for tracking multi-site somatic voltage dynamics via high-speed fiber photometry is now on bioRxiv.

May 2026

Welcome to our new master students

Several new master students joined the lab this spring to work on voltage imaging and deep brain stimulation projects.

Apr 2026

Lab presents at the Dutch Neuroscience Meeting

Members of the lab presented recent work at the 2026 Dutch Neuroscience Meeting.

All news →

Support & collaborators

Join the lab

We welcome curious students and researchers in neuroscience, physics and engineering. PhD, MSc and internship opportunities.

See open positions