New microscopy technique reveals the activity of one million neurons across the mouse brain.
Capturing the intricacies of the brain’s activity demands resolution, scale, and speed—the ability to visualize millions of neurons with crystal clear resolution as they actively call out from distant corners of the cortex, within a fraction of a second of one another.
Now, researchers have developed a microscopy technique that will allow scientists to accomplish this feat, capturing detailed images of the activity of a vast number of cells across different depths in the brain at high speed and with unprecedented clarity. Published in Nature Methods, the research demonstrates the power of this innovation, dubbed light beads microscopy, by presenting the first vivid functional movies of the near-simultaneous activity of one million neurons across the mouse brain.
“Understanding the nature of the brain’s densely interconnected network requires developing novel imaging techniques that can capture the activity of neurons across vastly separated brain regions at high speed and single-cell resolution,” says Rockefeller’s Alipasha Vaziri. “Light beads microscopy will allow us to investigate biological questions in a way that had not been possible before.”
