Topic: Miniature head-mounted microscopes

Miniature head-mounted microscopes have enabled in vivo optical measurements of neural activity in freely moving animals, allowing neuroscientists to study the neural basis of behaviors that are difficult to recapitulate in head-fixed preparations like social interaction and navigation. Existing head-mounted microscopes for small animals are limited to small fields of view (< 1mm2), which limit the number of neurons that can be recorded simultaneously to at most several hundred. However, understanding how behavior is controlled by large neural populations across brain regions requires simul

To investigate the circuit-level neural mechanisms of behavior, simultaneous imaging of neuronal activity in multiple cortical and subcortical regions is highly desired. Miniature head-mounted microscopes offer the capability of calcium imaging in freely behaving animals. However, implanting multiple microscopes on a mouse brain remains challenging due to space constraints and the cumbersome weight of the equipment. Here, we present TINIscope, a Tightly Integrated Neuronal Imaging microscope optimized for electronic and opto-mechanical design. With its compact and lightweight design of 0.43 g,