Abstract
Sensory inputs carry critical information for the survival of an organism. In mice, tactile information conveyed by the whiskers is of high behavioural relevance, and is broadcasted across cortical areas beyond the primary somatosensory cortex. Mesoscopic voltage sensitive dye imaging (VSDI) of cortical population response to whisker stimulations has shown that seemingly ‘simple’ sensory stimuli can have extended impact on cortical circuit dynamics. Here we took advantage of genetically encoded voltage indicators (GEVIs) that allow for cell type-specific monitoring of population voltage dynamics in a chronic dual-hemisphere transcranial windowed mouse preparation to directly compare the cortex-wide broadcasting of sensory information in wakening (lightly anesthetized to sedated) and awake mice. Somatosensory-evoked cortex-wide dynamics is altered across brain states, with anatomically sequential hyperpolarising activity observed in the awake cortex. GEVI imaging revealed cortical activity maps with increased specificity, high spatial coverage, and at the timescale of cortical information processing.
Highlights
Sensory inputs carry critical information for the survival of an organism
genetically encoded voltage indicators (GEVIs) imaging across the dorsal view of the mouse cortex
Stimulus-evoked pyramidal population responses were found in primary somatosensory cortex contralateral to the site of stimulation, in the form of an early depolarisation followed by a repolarisation and subsequent rebounding depolarisation (Fig. 1D,E, Supplementary Fig. S1B)
Summary
Sensory inputs carry critical information for the survival of an organism. In mice, tactile information conveyed by the whiskers is of high behavioural relevance, and is broadcasted across cortical areas beyond the primary somatosensory cortex. We took advantage of genetically encoded voltage indicators (GEVIs) that allow for cell type-specific monitoring of population voltage dynamics in a chronic dual-hemisphere transcranial windowed mouse preparation to directly compare the cortex-wide broadcasting of sensory information in wakening (lightly anesthetized to sedated) and awake mice. Mesoscopic imaging of genetically encoded calcium[4,5,11] and voltage indicators[12,13,14,15,16] (GECIs and GEVIs respectively) using thin-skull transcranial mouse models permits chronic cortex-wide monitoring of dynamic activity from identified cell types in awake mice. In combination with recent advances such as the mouse brain connectome and refined functional mapping, this approach provides a powerful methodological platform to achieve high spatial coverage monitoring of specific cell class populations at the timescale of synaptic signalling, allowing functional characterisation of the distribution of neuronal computation tasks for different components of behaviour. Compared to GECI imaging, GEVI-based voltage imaging has the advantages of high temporal resolution and exclusive access to hyperpolarising activity, whilst still preserving the benefits of genetically encoded optical indicators, including cell type specificity, reproducible indicator expression pattern, and the possibility of chronic preparations to allow direct within-animal longitudinal functional comparisons[12,13,17,18,19]
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