Large-scale Recording of Neuronal Activity at High Spatiotemporal Resolutions and Applications in Neuroscience

About this Research Topic

Background

Accurate detection of brain-wide interactions across local neural circuits would enable transformative understanding of dynamic signaling in the nervous system. The development of such capabilities requires the application of new technologies and novel approaches. Optical methods provide some of the prerequisites for high spatiotemporal resolution. However, current methods are limited by the inherent properties of tissues and imaging hardware. Therefore, the performance of current imaging systems, including scale, resolution, speed, and depth, should be further optimized for imaging the entire mammalian brain.

Recently, new indicators of neuronal activity have been developed and various optical and photoacoustic imaging methods have been proposed. Methods such as light sheet microscopy and light field microscopy allow recording from the whole brain or the whole animal in small modal animals, such as C. Elegans and zebrafish. Multiphoton mesoscopes have been developed to achieve large-scale recordings in the brains of mammalian species, which are generally larger and opaque. The integration of advanced computational imaging techniques can further improve imaging performance through more efficient acquisition schemes. Further innovative approaches are needed to capture activity patterns at the cellular level simultaneously over a large portion of the mammalian brain.

For this Research Topic, we focus on both technological and methodological advances and novel applications of large-scale recording of neuronal activity at high spatial and temporal resolution. We welcome submissions of Original Research, Brief Research Reports, reviews, Mini-Reviews and Opinions on the following topics:
- Fluorescent probes designed for large-scale recording of neuronal network activity in vivo;
- Whole-brain or whole-animal recording using methods such as light sheet microscopy, light field microscopy, photoacoustic microscopy, or other modalities;
- Recording of cortex-wide activity using nonlinear fluorescence microscopy;
- Deep brain imaging using methods such as adaptive optics and three-photon microscopy;
- Data analysis methods for large-scale recording data;
- Data-driven neural computational models;
- Applications of large-scale recording techniques to identify changes in brain-wide activity patterns in health and disease.

Keywords: Neural techniques, Neurophotonics, System Neuroscience, Optical imaging, Optical Microscopy, Nonlinear microscopy, Computational imaging, Neural computation

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