Mark Reimers Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience Seminar
Mark Reimers, Michigan State (https://iq.msu.edu/mark-reimers/)
Location: E5 2004
Title: A new and inexpensive method for high-resolution imaging of neural activity across the cortex of small animals
Abstract: In this talk I will introduce a new system for imaging the activity of several thousand labelled neurons distributed sparsely across the dorsal cortex of a mouse at high speed. The key is to use extensive computation to make up for the deficits of simple imaging systems. I will describe the ideas behind our system and the technology that we're using to implement these ideas, at a cost of under $50,000. I will describe some of the technical issues we've addressed, and issues that we’re still working on. A natural question to ask is how much of the complex cortical activity can be inferred by recording from a small fraction of neurons in each area. I will present evidence from large-scale Zebrafish and mouse brain recordings to suggest that a surprisingly small fraction of labelled neurons may be sufficient to represent most of the population activity in the upper layers of cortex.