Neurons and neural networks often extend hundreds of micrometers in three dimensions. Capturing the calcium transients associated with their activity requires volume imaging methods with subsecond temporal resolution. Such speed is a challenge for conventional two-photon laser-scanning microscopy, because it depends on serial focal scanning in 3D and indicators with limited brightness. Here we present an optical module that is easily integrated into standard two-photon laser-scanning microscopes to generate an axially elongated Bessel focus, which when scanned in 2D turns frame rate into volume rate. We demonstrated the power of this approach in enabling discoveries for neurobiology by imaging the calcium dynamics of volumes of neurons and synapses in fruit flies, zebrafish larvae, mice and ferrets in vivo. Calcium signals in objects as small as dendritic spines could be resolved at video rates, provided that the samples were sparsely labeled to limit overlap in their axially projected images.
You may also like
Insulin-like hormones critical for brain plasticity
August 7, 2023Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience
A Butterfly Effect
July 27, 2023Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience
Deep learning models to study sentence comprehension...
June 28, 2023Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
How the brain slows down when we focus our gaze
June 28, 2023Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics
Fruit fly’s complex symphony of vision
June 6, 2023Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence
How tasty is the food? Ask your brain!
June 6, 2023Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence