Description:
Princeton University Invention #
07-2353
Researchers in the Department of Neuroscience, Princeton University have
developed a unique apparatus which allows for micron-scale optical recording,
imaging and stimulation of neural activity of awake and behaving rodents while
they are head fixed. For several important questions in neuroscience, it is
important to relate animal behavior to cellular processes. This is difficult
because the best tools to measure and stimulate neural processes require single
cell resolution, and this requires that the tissue be stable to within a few
microns. Most of those experiments are done in brain slices, or at best in anesthetized
animals where there is minimal motion artifacts. However, functions such as
memory formation or retention do not work under anesthesia, and so have not yet
been studied in depth with those techniques. This invention greatly expands the
type of experiments possible because it allows imaging and stimulating a single
neuron or a population of neurons while the animal is awake and behaving. The
method of restraint allows for greater tissue stabilization and very likely
causes much less stress than existing restraint techniques. It allows imaging
studies in dendrites and spines that are too small to record from electrodes
directly. This device works well with rodents, especially mice, the mammal most
easily manipulated genetically. Due to the large variety of transgenic lines,
mice are a very promising model system for neuroscience. Some of these lines
have fluorescently labeled neurons whose activity can be imaged directly during
behavior. Others can be used to relate gene function to the neural mechanisms
and to behavior.
Our device
and process measure and stimulate neural activity optically and measure activity
with extra-cellular electrodes while the animal is awake and behaving, which
allows for the imaging and
electrical recording from rodents in the laboratory while they are alert, awake
and behaving. Our invention allows for the external control of the visual,
vestibular and other sensory cues to the animal providing much greater control
of cues compared with freely behaving experiments.
The
immediate application for this invention is to create a ¿virtual reality¿, the
construction of a controlled enviroment under which animal neural activity and
behavoir are studied. This device expands imaging experiments to study behavoir,
leanring and memory.
Princeton
is currently seeking industrial collaborators for the further development and
commercialization of this technology.
For more
information on Princeton University invention # 07-2353 pleases
contact:
Laurie Tzodikov
Office of Technology Licensing and Intellectual
Property
Princeton
University
4 New South Building
Princeton, NJ 08544-0036
(609) 258-7256
(609) 258-1159 fax
tzodikov@princeton.edu