In their recent publication, Jeffrey Demas and co-authors introduced “Light Beads Microscopy”, an important technological breakthrough in 2 photon microscopy. The authors demonstrated how their innovative microscopy approach can be used to observe the activity of individual neurons in vivo in large volumes of mouse cortex, offering a long-sought approach to studying brain encoding. Light Beads Microscopy is a new method of two-photon microscopy optimized for...
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ScanImage software from MBF Bioscience, along with the accompanying vDAQ acquisition and control card with analog to digital, digital to analog, breakout board, is built to control many combinations of hardware in order to carry out in-vivo imaging on a cellular scale. This makes it possible to observe the neural activities, such as those indicated by calcium concentration or voltage changes, of specific neuronal types...
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Humans and animal species can move in controlled motion sequences because of a delicate balance in the signaling of certain neurons in the area of the brain called the striatum. In this brain region, some neurons tell muscles to move, while others tell muscles to hold steady. In the brains of patients with Parkinson’s disease, more of the neurons that signal movement are activated resulting...
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Most neuroscientists are familiar with the saying “cells that fire together wire together,” which is often used to summarize the Hebbian theory of synaptic plasticity—first put forth in Donald Hebb’s book The Organization of Behavior in 1949. The theory describes how coincident activity between pre- and post-synaptic cells can shape synaptic strength. Verified decades later, the theory has since become accepted within the neuroscientific community. However,...
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Complex imaging and experimental tasks must happen quickly in a smooth workflow so that experiments can be performed within the time constraints imposed by working with behaving animals. ScanImage is the software of choice for controlling your scanning microscopy experiments because it provides robust cutting edge imaging features coupled with the ability to automate and time workflows like no other application can. A key feature...
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A new optical clearing agent developed by scientists in Japan clears brain tissue samples with greater transparency and less time than other clearing agents, according to a paper published in Nature Neuroscience. “Combined with two-photon microscopy, SeeDB allowed us to image fixed mouse brains at the millimeter-scale level,” say the authors, who after clearing the brain tissue with SeeDB, captured images with a multiphoton Olympus microscope,...
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