Abstract
The internal brain dynamics that link sensation and action are arguably better studied during natural animal behaviors. Here we report on a novel volume imaging and 3D tracking technique that monitors whole brain neural activity in freely swimming larval zebrafish (Danio rerio). We demonstrated the capability of our system through functional imaging of neural activity during visually evoked and prey capture behaviors in larval zebrafish.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB02060012)
- Kai Wang
National Science Foundation of China (NSFC-31471051)
- Quan Wen
China Thousand Talents Program
- Kai Wang
CAS Pioneer Hundred Talents Program
- Quan Wen
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Ronald L Calabrese, Emory University, United States
Ethics
Animal experimentation: Zebrafish handling procedures were approved by the Institute of Neuroscience, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences.(permit number: USTCACUC1103013).
Version history
- Received: April 28, 2017
- Accepted: September 11, 2017
- Accepted Manuscript published: September 20, 2017 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: October 17, 2017 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2017, Cong et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Rapid whole brain imaging of neural activity in freely behaving larval zebrafish (Danio rerio)
eLife 6:e28158.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.28158
Further reading
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Synaptic inputs to cortical neurons are highly structured in adult sensory systems, such that neighboring synapses along dendrites are activated by similar stimuli. This organization of synaptic inputs, called synaptic clustering, is required for high-fidelity signal processing, and clustered synapses can already be observed before eye opening. However, how clustered inputs emerge during development is unknown. Here, we employed concurrent in vivo whole-cell patch-clamp and dendritic calcium imaging to map spontaneous synaptic inputs to dendrites of layer 2/3 neurons in the mouse primary visual cortex during the second postnatal week until eye opening. We found that the number of functional synapses and the frequency of transmission events increase several fold during this developmental period. At the beginning of the second postnatal week, synapses assemble specifically in confined dendritic segments, whereas other segments are devoid of synapses. By the end of the second postnatal week, just before eye opening, dendrites are almost entirely covered by domains of co-active synapses. Finally, co-activity with their neighbor synapses correlates with synaptic stabilization and potentiation. Thus, clustered synapses form in distinct functional domains presumably to equip dendrites with computational modules for high-capacity sensory processing when the eyes open.
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Accurate tracking of the same neurons across multiple days is crucial for studying changes in neuronal activity during learning and adaptation. Advances in high-density extracellular electrophysiology recording probes, such as Neuropixels, provide a promising avenue to accomplish this goal. Identifying the same neurons in multiple recordings is, however, complicated by non-rigid movement of the tissue relative to the recording sites (drift) and loss of signal from some neurons. Here, we propose a neuron tracking method that can identify the same cells independent of firing statistics, that are used by most existing methods. Our method is based on between-day non-rigid alignment of spike-sorted clusters. We verified the same cell identity in mice using measured visual receptive fields. This method succeeds on datasets separated from 1 to 47 days, with an 84% average recovery rate.
