First recordings of whole-brain neural activity of an unrestrained animal
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.028596
MIT Technology Review : Recording neural activity for an entire brain has only ever been done with animals that are held in place. Recordings of unrestrained animals have been limited to small sections of the brain. Now Jeffrey Nguyen of Princeton University and his colleagues have recorded whole-brain activity in swimming nematodes. To do that, they suspended a movable camera system above a petri dish holding a nematode and then used image recognition software to keep the camera focused on the animal’s head. Combined with a standard imaging technique that causes neurons to fluoresce when they release calcium ions, which is considered a proxy for neural activity, the system allowed them to record five brain volumes per second.
