Branco Weiss Fellow Since
2024
Research Category
Neuroscience, Optical Engineering, Physics
Research Location
Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA
Background
One of the most formidable challenges in neuroscience lies in developing approaches to measure the activity of every cell in the brain of a freely moving animal. In the ideal case, the same methods would also be extendable to multiple animals: This would allow addressing questions on how neural activity patterns in socially interacting animals relate to each other? How do they change with development as different social behaviors emerge? What are the timescales over which brain states evolve in the course of social encounters?
Details of Research
Over the past decades, optical whole-brain imaging of neuronal activity has become commonplace in many neuroscience laboratories and has led to a wide range of insights into brain function during development, behavior, and disease. However, imaging with cellular resolution often requires head-fixation to stabilize the animal below the microscope – a highly unnatural approach that risks changing whole-brain activity patterns due to stress. Especially during social encounters and other complex behaviors, allowing animals to freely move is key to studying their full behavioral repertoire. Owing to the speed with which small animals such as larval zebrafish move during swim bouts, fast tracking microscopy is crucial for functional imaging. However, existing tracking approaches are not extendable to multiple socially interacting animals. To tackle this challenge, Dr. Fabian Voigt will be using a multidisciplinary approach combining systems neuroscience, optical engineering, and nanophotonics to develop instruments to record neuronal activity in multiple freely moving larval zebrafish.
