Chinese scientists show animal brain changes while awake through neural imaging
Microscopy technology is promising because of potential for taking live imaging of the brain and other organs and tissues, say researchers
Chinese researchers have developed a microscopy technique to take imagery of neurons in animals that are awake, a method they say allowed them to capture the rapidly changing dynamics in the neurons of mice running on wheels.
The new technique extends the capabilities of super-resolution microscopy, which has previously been limited to imaging cultured cells, tissue sections or anaesthetised animals.
“Neurons are best studied in their native states in which their functional and morphological dynamics support animals’ natural behaviours,” the team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences said in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Methods last month.
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Neurons – nerve cells that send signals throughout the body which allow us to carry out functions such as eating, walking and talking – have specialised structures to support necessary functions such as communication and information integration that change over time.
The use of super-resolution microscopy to capture imagery of animals performing natural behaviour has remained a challenge because any motion can lead to imaging artefacts, or distortions in the image.
Anaesthesia, which has been used to help examine the neurons of living animals, is not ideal because it alters the physiology of neural circuits.
To overcome this, the team, led by senior investigator Wang Kai at the Centre for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, introduced a new type of super-resolution microscopy – multiplexed, line-scanning, structured illumination microscopy.
The new two-colour imaging technique is “immune to motion-induced artefacts and enables longitudinal super-resolution imaging in brains of head-fixed awake and behaving animals”.
