NINscope, a versatile miniscope for multi-region circuit investigations
- Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Netherlands
- TU Delft, Netherlands
- Erasmus Medical Center, Netherlands
Abstract
Miniaturized fluorescence microscopes (miniscopes) have been instrumental to monitor neural signals during unrestrained behavior and their open-source versions have made them affordable. Often, the footprint and weight of open-source miniscopes is sacrificed for added functionality. Here, we present NINscope: a light-weight miniscope with a small footprint that integrates a high-sensitivity image sensor, an inertial measurement unit and an LED driver for an external optogenetic probe. We use it to perform the first concurrent cellular resolution recordings from cerebellum and cerebral cortex in unrestrained mice, demonstrate its optogenetic stimulation capabilities to examine cerebello-cerebral or cortico-striatal connectivity, and replicate findings of action encoding in dorsal striatum. In combination with cross-platform control software, our miniscope is a versatile addition to the expanding toolbox of open-source miniscopes that will increase access to multi-region circuit investigations during unrestrained behavior.
Data availability
Hardware, firmware and software have been deposited at GitHub under an MIT license.
Article and author information
Author details
Bastijn JG van den Boom
Funding
Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (240-840100)
- Chris I De Zeeuw
- Tycho M Hoogland
Topsector Life Sciences & Health (LSHM18001)
- Tycho M Hoogland
H2020 European Research Council (ERC-2014-STG 638013)
- Ingo Willuhn
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (2015/06367/ALW 864.14.010)
- Ingo Willuhn
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (ALWOP.2015.076)
- Chris I De Zeeuw
- Tycho M Hoogland
H2020 European Research Council (ERC-adv ERC-POC)
- Chris I De Zeeuw
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All performed experiments were licensed by the Dutch Competent Authority and approved by the local Animal Welfare Body, following the European guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals Directive 2010/63/EU.
Copyright
© 2020, de Groot 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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NINscope, a versatile miniscope for multi-region circuit investigations
eLife 9:e49987.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.49987
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