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Scope-Headed Rats Roam Free

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By building a tiny laser microscope small enough to mount on a rat’s head, researchers found a way to solve the puzzle of recording meaningful signals from brain cells that calculate perception and attention while the subject is in motion.

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New data from rats with head-mounted microscopes sheds light on how we put the world together seamlessly while we move around. (Photo: Copyright ©MPI for Biological Cybernetics)

As we interact with the world around us, it is essential that all five of our senses work together simultaneously and seamlessly to allow us to freely explore and make sense of our environment. Like a supercharged GPS, our brain is constantly updating our position in space based on the information received from our senses as well as our motor and vestibular systems, all in real time. The problem for researchers trying to understand how this occurs has always been how to record meaningful signals from the brain cells that do these calculations while we are moving.

To address this problem, researchers at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen developed a way of actually watching the activity of many brain cells simultaneously in an animal that is free to move around the environment.

By developing a small, lightweight laser-scanning microscope, researchers were able, for the first time, to image activity from fluorescent neurons in animals that were awake and moving around, while tracking the exact position of the animal in space. The microscope uses a high-powered pulsing laser and fiber optics to scan cells below the surface of the brain, eliminating the need to insert electrodes, which are traditionally used, and making the microscope noninvasive to brain tissue.

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The fiberscope developed at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics attaches to a rat’s head and provides valuable information about how the brain works while a subject is in motion. The microscope uses a high-powered pulsing laser and fiber optics to scan cells below the surface of the brain, eliminating the need to insert electrodes, which are traditionally used, and making the microscope noninvasive to the brain tissue. (Photo: Jason Kerr/©MPI for Biological Cybernetics)

The traditional approach to solving these sorts of questions is to restrain the animal and present it with a series of scenes or movies or images. The miniaturized microscope allows the researchers to turn this paradigm around and allow the animal to freely move around in its environment, while still allowing the scientists to monitor the activity of the brain cells responsible for processing visual information.

It is clear that the brain does not work one cell at a time to recognize the environment, so the microscope records from many cells at a time, allowing the researcher for the first time the ability to look at how the brain is able to generate an internal representation of the outside world while using natural vision.

“We need to let the animal behave as naturally as possible if we want to understand how its brain operates during interaction with complex environments. The new technology is a major milestone on the way to helping us understand how perception and attention work,” said Jason Kerr, lead author of a study on the work appearing this week in the online early edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

For more information, visit: www.kyb.mpg.de




Published: November 2009
Glossary
cell
1. A single unit in a device for changing radiant energy to electrical energy or for controlling current flow in a circuit. 2. A single unit in a device whose resistance varies with radiant energy. 3. A single unit of a battery, primary or secondary, for converting chemical energy into electrical energy. 4. A simple unit of storage in a computer. 5. A limited region of space. 6. Part of a lens barrel holding one or more lenses.
microscope
An instrument consisting essentially of a tube 160 mm long, with an objective lens at the distant end and an eyepiece at the near end. The objective forms a real aerial image of the object in the focal plane of the eyepiece where it is observed by the eye. The overall magnifying power is equal to the linear magnification of the objective multiplied by the magnifying power of the eyepiece. The eyepiece can be replaced by a film to photograph the primary image, or a positive or negative relay...
photonics
The technology of generating and harnessing light and other forms of radiant energy whose quantum unit is the photon. The science includes light emission, transmission, deflection, amplification and detection by optical components and instruments, lasers and other light sources, fiber optics, electro-optical instrumentation, related hardware and electronics, and sophisticated systems. The range of applications of photonics extends from energy generation to detection to communications and...
vision
The processes in which luminous energy incident on the eye is perceived and evaluated.
Biological CyberneticsBiophotonicsbrainCellfiber opticsfluorescentImagingJason KerrMax Planck InstitutemicroscopeMicroscopymotionMPIneuronNews & FeaturesperceptionphotonicsProceedings of the National Academy of SciencesratResearch & TechnologysensesvestibularvisionLasers

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