Beccy Owen - The Trials and Tribulations of Electrophysiology

Beccy Owen - The Trials and Tribulations of Electrophysiology

From Dementia Researcher Blogs by Dementia Researcher

May 27, 2026 · 10 min · Episode 699

About this episode

Beccy Owen shares her experiences and insights on electrophysiology in Alzheimer's research.

Beccy Owen narrates her blog written for Dementia Researcher. Electrophysiology has taken up roughly 80% of Beccy's thoughts this past year, so she has written about it. Beccy is a PhD student at the University of Warwick studying how tau drives ion channel dysfunction in Alzheimer's disease, and she uses whole-cell patch-clamp and extracellular field recordings to do it. In this blog she walks through what these techniques actually involve. She writes about crying the first time she got a stable recording, dreaming about pipette tips, and the friend who genuinely wondered if she would have to change projects. The science is serious. The journey to being any good at it is, by Beccy's own account, fairly chaotic. https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-the-trials-and-tribulations-of-electrophysiology/ -- Beccy Owen is a PhD Researcher at the University of Warwick, exploring how tau pathology disrupts neuronal ion channels and brain network activity in Alzheimer’s disease. As part of the Midlands Integrative Biosciences Training Programme, her work uses electrophysiology to better understand the molecular drivers of neurodegeneration. Originally from the Welsh countryside…

People in this episode

Guest: Beccy Owen

Topics covered

  • electrophysiology
  • Alzheimer's disease
  • tau pathology
  • ion channel dysfunction
  • PhD journey
  • neurodegeneration

Keywords

  • electrophysiology
  • Alzheimer's disease
  • tau
  • ion channels
  • patch-clamp
  • neurodegeneration
  • PhD research

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Warwick, Dementia Researcher

Books & works: The Trials and Tribulations of Electrophysiology

Places: Welsh countryside

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