Couto, Joao, Musall, Simon, Sun, Xiaonan R, Khanal, Anup, Gluf, Steven, Saxena, Shreya, Kinsella, Ian, Abe, Taiga, Cunningham, John P, Paninski, Liam, Churchland, Anne K (June 2021) Chronic, cortex-wide imaging of specific cell populations during behavior. Nature Protocols. ISSN 1754-2189
Abstract
Measurements of neuronal activity across brain areas are important for understanding the neural correlates of cognitive and motor processes such as attention, decision-making and action selection. However, techniques that allow cellular resolution measurements are expensive and require a high degree of technical expertise, which limits their broad use. Wide-field imaging of genetically encoded indicators is a high-throughput, cost-effective and flexible approach to measure activity of specific cell populations with high temporal resolution and a cortex-wide field of view. Here we outline our protocol for assembling a wide-field macroscope setup, performing surgery to prepare the intact skull and imaging neural activity chronically in behaving, transgenic mice. Further, we highlight a processing pipeline that leverages novel, cloud-based methods to analyze large-scale imaging datasets. The protocol targets laboratories that are seeking to build macroscopes, optimize surgical procedures for long-term chronic imaging and/or analyze cortex-wide neuronal recordings. The entire protocol, including steps for assembly and calibration of the macroscope, surgical preparation, imaging and data analysis, requires a total of 8 h. It is designed to be accessible to laboratories with limited expertise in imaging methods or interest in high-throughput imaging during behavior.
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