A next-generation spatial light modulator for mapping of neural networks

 描述（由申请人提供）：提高我们对大脑基本电路和动力学的理解对广泛的领域具有深远的影响，包括心理健康，计算和心灵哲学。为此，神经科学家目前面临的一个关键问题是，大脑状态和行为是如何从神经元集合的活动中产生的。目前，回答这个问题的努力部分地受到用于探测细胞水平动力学的光学技术可获得的亚毫米长度尺度与用于监测大脑状态的全脑成像技术可获得的毫米级分辨率之间的脱节的阻碍。博尔德非线性系统（BNS）和马萨诸塞州理工学院（MIT）媒体实验室的Edward Boyden教授的合成神经生物学小组提出了一种新颖的两阶段设计方法，以克服这种“成像差距”，改善大脑网络的功能映射。在许多尖端光学技术中，增加视场（FOV）和速度的关键障碍是空间光调制器（SLM），它能够生成许多独立的“子光束”，这些子光束能够在三维空间中同时激活和记录神经元的神经活动。第一阶段将通过开发和部署新的建模功能来解决这一障碍，然后将提供给光学设计社区，以确定SLM规格和光学系统，以在实用的全息多光子显微镜中提供1×1×0.5 mm3 FOV和1 ms切换速度。与当前文献相比，这些能力将使脑组织的可达体积增加超过一个数量级，同时将SLM响应时间降低到单个神经元放电事件（动作电位）的水平。在第二阶段，BNS和MIT将开发新的下一代SLM，并在功能神经映射实验中对其进行评估。该项目的影响将是多方面的：我们将开发新的建模功能，使光学设计人员和研究人员能够首次正确模拟基于SLM的光学系统，我们将使用这种整体建模方法开发一种新的SLM器件，其性能比当前市场上的任何器件都要优越上级。这种下一代SLM预计将在神经科学领域产生强大的影响，并在许多学科中找到广泛的商业市场。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Improving our understanding of the fundamental circuitry and dynamics of the brain has far reaching implications for a wide range of fields, including mental health, computing, and the philosophy of the mind. To this end, one of the critical questions currently facing neuroscientists lies in how brain states and behaviors arise from the activity of ensembles of neurons. Currently, efforts to answer this question are hampered in part by the disconnect between the sub-millimeter length scales accessible to the optical techniques used to probe cellular- level dynamics and the millimeter-scale resolution available to the whole brain imaging techniques used to monitor brain states. Boulder Nonlinear Systems (BNS) and Prof. Edward Boyden's Synthetic Neurobiology Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab propose a novel two-phase design effort to overcome this "imaging gap" to improve functional mapping of brain networks. The critical barrier to increasing the field of view (FOV) and speed in many cutting-edge optical techniques is the spatial light modulator (SLM), which enables the generation of many independent "beamlets" capable of activating and recording neural activity simultaneously across ensembles of neurons in three dimensions. Phase I will address this barrier by developing and deploying new modeling capabilities, which will then be available to the optical design community, to determine the SLM specifications and optical system required to provide a 1×1×0.5 mm3 FOV and 1 ms switching speed in a practical holographic multiphoton microscope. These capabilities will increase the accessible volume of brain tissue by more than an order of magnitude in comparison with the current literature while reducing the SLM response time down to the level of single neuron firing events (action potentials). In Phase II, BNS and MIT will develop the new next-generation SLM and evaluate it in functional neural mapping experiments. The impact of this project will be multifold: we will develop new modeling capabilities to enable optical designers and researchers to properly simulate SLM-based optical systems for the first time, and we will use this holistic modeling approach to develop a new SLM device with vastly superior performance than anything on the current market. This next-generation SLM is predicted to have a powerful impact in the field of neuroscience and find a wide commercial market across many disciplines.