TASK-DEPENDENT NEURONAL ACTIVITY IN CEREBELLAR NUCLEI OF MICE MOVING
FREELY IN DISTINCT 3D ENVIRONMENTS

Imaging deep brain structure activity in a freely-behaving mouse remains
an experimental challenge. Here, leveraging our marker-based 3D
motion capture system, we synchronized highly accurate behavioral
recordings with calcium imaging of neurons in cerebellar nuclei. We compare the activity of the same neurons across distinct behavioral
tasks to shed light on the role of cerebellar nuclei in the control of behavior.

We used adult male C57BL/6J mice in a within-subject, randomized design
(n=6). nVoke 2.0 (Inscopix, CA) miniscope was used to image cerebellar
nuclei (-6.12AP, +/-2L/M, -2D) with GRIN lens covered with virus
pAAV.syn.GCaMP6f.WPRE.SV40. After correcting the calcium imaging videos
for background and motion noise with Min1pipe, and matching the videos
across recording days (rigid registration on the average image), we
could identify common regions of interest across recordings for a
given mouse (n=20-30, 3 mice).
Preliminary observations indicate that each of the following tasks – exploration of novel 2D and 3D environments, climbing on a mesh wheel, and
treadmill running (20 and 30 m/min) – showed distinct neuronal activity characterizing the
task, which we were able to reproduce in a couple of trials. While 3D
(mesh wheel and 3D exploration) tasks display varying neural activity
during the recording length, treadmill running displays rather
constant activity.
Further analysis is ongoing to characterize cell-specific activity patterns across tasks, and to uncover links between neural
activity and specific behavioral actions.