| First Author | Das A | Year | 2023 |
| Journal | Nat Commun | Volume | 14 |
| Issue | 1 | Pages | 6399 |
| PubMed ID | 37828016 | Mgi Jnum | J:359032 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:7542384 | Doi | 10.1038/s41467-023-42083-y |
| Citation | Das A, et al. (2023) Large-scale recording of neuronal activity in freely-moving mice at cellular resolution. Nat Commun 14(1):6399 |
| abstractText | Current methods for recording large-scale neuronal activity from behaving mice at single-cell resolution require either fixing the mouse head under a microscope or attachment of a recording device to the animal's skull. Both of these options significantly affect the animal behavior and hence also the recorded brain activity patterns. Here, we introduce a different method to acquire snapshots of single-cell cortical activity maps from freely-moving mice using a calcium sensor called CaMPARI. CaMPARI has a unique property of irreversibly changing its color from green to red inside active neurons when illuminated with 400 nm light. We capitalize on this property to demonstrate cortex-wide activity recording without any head fixation, tethering, or attachment of a miniaturized device to the mouse's head. Multiple cortical regions were recorded while the mouse was performing a battery of behavioral and cognitive tests. We identified task-dependent activity patterns across motor and somatosensory cortices, with significant differences across sub-regions of the motor cortex and correlations across several activity patterns and task parameters. This CaMPARI-based recording method expands the capabilities of recording neuronal activity from freely-moving and behaving mice under minimally-restrictive experimental conditions and provides large-scale volumetric data that are currently not accessible otherwise. |
