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Activity of Whole Fish Brains Mapped Second To Second

Posted by Soulskill on from the pretty-pictures dept.

ananyo writes "Researchers have imaged an entire vertebrate brain at the level of single neurons for the first time. A team of scientists based at the Janelia Farm Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia, were able to record activity across the whole brain of a fish embryo almost every second, detecting 80% of its 100,000 neurons. The work is a first step towards mapping the activity of a whole human brain — which contains about 85,000 times more neurons than the zebrafish brain. The imaging system relies on a genetically engineered zebrafish (Danio rerio). The fish's neurons make a protein that fluoresces in response to fluctuations in the concentration of calcium ions, which occur when nerve cells fire. A microscope sends sheets of light rather than a conventional beam through the fish's brain, and a detector captures the signals like a viewer watching a cinema screen. The system records activity from the full brain every 1.3 seconds."

4 of 56 comments (clear)

  1. Progress, but not totally there yet by girlintraining · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is like taking slices of 80% of a computer's memory once a second. Sure, you might be able to get an idea of what's going on, but until you can see the whole picture, a lot of things are not going to make sense...

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    1. Re:Progress, but not totally there yet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This is like taking slices of 80% of a computer's memory once a second. Sure, you might be able to get an idea of what's going on, but until you can see the whole picture, a lot of things are not going to make sense...

      Not really. The indicator they are using can be deconvolved to near action potential resolution.

  2. Reminds me of by dwywit · · Score: 4, Interesting

    http://www.visual6502.org/JSSim/ in action.

    --
    They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
  3. They achieved cellular resolution! by wisebabo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Not apparent from the (cool) video they linked to is that according to the paper in Nature (yes I RTFA and I followed a link) they say they achieved cellular resolution (the video must be a down-sampled version). This would explain them collecting 1TB of data for each 1 hour "run". Another neat thing to notice is that their data is 3D, they are collecting volumetric data (as you can see from the video "slice") and explained in a previous paper. Impressive! Now if only they could increase the temporal resolution (multiple parallel scanning beams?) we could really see how a fish thinks!

    They say they could collect data from (currently small) sections of mammalian brains but it would require surgery. I wonder how soon until we see monkeys with their skulls replaced with transparent plastic or glass? Maybe they could use (a very advanced version of this) on patients undergoing brain surgery.

    By the way, are there any transparent plastics that are suitable for 3D printing? Biocompatible? I can see a time when some really crazy performance artist replaces his/her skull with a transparent one. I guess they would have to wear a hat whenever they went out into the sun though.