Original Research Article
Estimating firing rates from calcium signals in locust projection neurons in vivo
Division of Biology, California Institute of Technology, USA
Combining intracellular electrophysiology and multi-photon calcium imaging in vivo, we studied the relationship between calcium signals (sampled at 500–750 Hz) and spike output in principal neurons in the locust antennal lobe. Our goal was to determine whether the firing rate of individual neurons can be estimated in vivo with calcium imaging and, if so, to measure directly the accuracy and resolution of our estimates. Using the calcium indicator Oregon Green BAPTA-1, we describe a simple method to reconstruct firing rates from dendritic calcium signals with 80–90% accuracy and 50ms temporal resolution.
Keywords: locust, olfaction, projection neuron, two-photon microscopy, calcium imaging, Oregon Green BAPTA-1, electrophysiology, spiking activity
Copyright: © 2007 Moreaux and Laurent. This is an open-access article subject to an exclusive license agreement between the authors and the Frontiers Research Foundation, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited.
*Correspondence: Gilles Laurent, Division of Biology, California Institute of Technology, 139-74, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. e-mail: laurentg@caltech.edu
Citation: Moreaux L and Laurent G (2007) Estimating firing rates from calcium signals in locust projection neurons in vivo. Front. Neural Circuits (2007) 1:2. doi:10.3389/neuro.04.002.2007
Received: 09 August 2007; paper pending published: 17 September 2007; accepted: 15 October 2007; published online: 02 November 2007.
Edited by:
Rafael Yuste, Columbia University, USA
Reviewed by:
Steve M. Potter, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Rafael Yuste, Columbia University, USA
Rafael Yuste, Columbia University, USA
*Correspondence: Gilles Laurent, Division of Biology, California Institute of Technology, 139-74, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. e-mail: laurentg@caltech.edu
