Current Biology
Volume 23, Issue 4, 18 February 2013, Pages 307-311
Journal home page for Current Biology

Report
Real-Time Visualization of Neuronal Activity during Perception

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2012.12.040Get rights and content
Under an Elsevier user license
open archive

Summary

To understand how the brain perceives the external world, it is desirable to observe neuronal activity in the brain in real time during perception. The zebrafish is a suitable model animal for fluorescence imaging studies to visualize neuronal activity because its body is transparent through the embryonic and larval stages. Imaging studies have been carried out to monitor neuronal activity in the larval spinal cord and brain using Ca2+ indicator dyes [1, 2, 3] and DNA-encoded Ca2+ indicators, such as Cameleon [4], GFP-aequorin [5], and GCaMPs [6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]. However, temporal and spatial resolution and sensitivity of these tools are still limited, and imaging of brain activity during perception of a natural object has not yet been demonstrated. Here we demonstrate visualization of neuronal activity in the optic tectum of larval zebrafish by genetically expressing the new version of GCaMP. First, we demonstrate Ca2+ transients in the tectum evoked by a moving spot on a display and identify direction-selective neurons. Second, we show tectal activity during perception of a natural object, a swimming paramecium, revealing a functional visuotopic map. Finally, we image the tectal responses of a free-swimming larval fish to a paramecium and thereby correlate neuronal activity in the brain with prey capture behavior.

Highlights

► A new version of GCaMP, GCaMP7a, was created ► Imaging with GCaMP identified direction-selective tectal neurons ► A swimming paramecium evoked dynamic tectal activities ► The tectal activity during prey capture was detected in free-swimming fish

Cited by (0)

4

These authors contributed equally to this work