Developing long-term neuro-behavioral recording and real-time processing platforms for naturally behaving animals

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A major challenge in neuroscience is to uncover how defined neural circuits in the brain encode, store, modify, and retrieve information. Adding to this challenge is the fact that neural function does not operate in isolation from but rather within living, behaving animals. To tackle this challenge, significant advancement of neural, behavioral, and computational tools is needed along with new experimental approaches to enable the detailed study of neural circuits within the context of complex behavior and naturalistic, ethologically relevant environments. This proposal aims to do exactly this by designing, implementing, and sharing a highly innovative, community driven, neuro-behavioral recording and real- time processing platform capable of uninterrupted, months-long wireless recording of neural and behavioral activity across a colony of animals in large, naturalistic environments. We will develop a new generation of ultra-light weight, fully wireless miniature microscopes (Miniscopes) for neural imaging in truly naturally behaving animals. These wireless Minsicopes will be powered remotely through power-over-distance technology and capable of imaging neural activity with single cell resolution across thousands of neurons. In combination with transgenic mouse lines, these wireless Miniscopes will continuously record neural activity across months as animals live, uninterrupted, in large, enriched environments. An extensive array of behavioral devices will be developed and natively integrated into the platform for animal tracking, parsing complex behaviors, and detecting animal-environment interactions. All tools and techniques built for this project will be actively shared through our open-source website and workshops. Neural and behavioral data will be processed, in real-time, through a novel computational framework (hardware and software) and shared openly through an online database accessible to the neuroscience community. Pilot experiments using this platform will investigate the long-term formation, stability, and generalization of hippocampal cognitive maps within ethologically relevant environments. Once validated, subsequent experiments will incorporate tasks proposed by the neuroscience community encompassing both basic science and investigation of neurological disorders. A single dataset generated with this platform will track a colony of animals’ complex behavior and neural activity through learning, recall, sleep, social behavior, and aging. This novel approach has the potential to fundamentally transform the way neuroscience research is thought about, implemented, and shared and will undoubtedly provide new insight into neural function and disorder.