Light-weight microscope captures large-scale brain activity of mice on the move

With a new microscope that's as light as a penny, researchers can now observe broad swaths of the brain in action as mice move about and interact with their environments.

Prior attempts to overcome this limitation were geared toward making whatever technology already existed weigh less—swapping out metal parts for plastic, for instance, while maintaining the basic optical design of microscopes in which a heavy lens forms a major part of the weight. Vaziri addressed this challenge in what he calls “a principled approach”.

Without a hefty compound lens to weigh it down, the mini microscope weighs only 2.5 grams, and provides imaging that can capture broad sections of the mouse brain across a 3.6 x 3.6 mm² field of view with 4 μm lateral resolution, 300 μm depth of field, and recording speed of 16 volumes per second. And most of its parts can be 3D printed, or make use of inexpensive, consumer-grade cell phone camera sensors.

Brain-Computer Interfaces Neuroscience Mice Rodents Animal Learning And Intelligence Optics Consumer Electronics Detectors

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