Breakthrough in Neuroscience Research Technology Successfully Developed New Light Field Microscope

2024-02-29

Many years ago, people could only observe the world with the naked eye or a magnifying glass. Since the successful development and use of microscopes, it can be said that it has ushered in a new era of human visual acuity, showcasing a whole new world in human vision. With the help of a microscope, people have also successfully observed microscopic fields that are different from before.

Microscopes not only contribute greatly to microbiology, but also play a positive role in materials, education, medical, biopharmaceutical, agricultural, environmental protection, national defense technology, chemistry, physics, biology, and other fields. At the same time, the progress and development of various scientific research have also increased the precision and technical requirements of microscopes, which has forced significant progress in microscope technology, And currently, there are still many experts and scholars developing new microscopic technologies and equipment.

In recent times, there have been new breakthroughs and advancements in the field of microscopy: the Howard Hughes Medical Research Institute has successfully developed a new cell visualization technology - DNA microscopy. This technology can use chemical methods to obtain internal information of cells, and the drawn images can also reflect the gene sequence and relative position of biomolecules within cells; A research and development team of a researcher in our country has developed a molecular scale resolution interferometric positioning microscope, which provides a powerful tool for further analyzing the components of fine subcellular cells and the nanostructure of biomolecules; The development of ultrafast scanning tunneling microscopy has also injected impetus and provided assistance for researchers to conduct in-depth research on the non-equilibrium kinetic processes of individual polarons, and has also provided new ideas for defect engineering of nano photocatalytic materials.

The development of microscopes is still ongoing, and the requirements for microscopy technology in various fields are also increasing. Taking neuroscience as an example, although confocal microscopy and two-photon microscopy can be used for point scanning in live brain imaging, their time resolution is low, making it difficult to study the rapid changes of neurons in a large area of the brain. In order to change this situation, scientific researchers have been committed to developing faster imaging methods. Recently, Wang Kai, a researcher in the State Key Laboratory of Neuroscience, developed a new type of expanded field of view light field microscope to solve the limitations of biological imaging.

After conducting whole brain calcium imaging on embedded live zebrafish juveniles and testing them on different animal samples, the research team found that the image resolution and signal-to-noise ratio of this technology were improved, which can effectively detect more weak calcium activity. It can also perform whole brain calcium imaging on animals, and even recognize the changes in calcium ion activity of individual neurons in zebrafish juveniles during their predation of paramecium. Not only that, the research team also demonstrated that confocal light field microscopy has higher resolution and sensitivity in the brains of freely behaving zebrafish juveniles and mice. This not only provides new tools for studying the functions of large-scale neural and vascular networks, but also allows for flexible adjustment of resolution, imaging range, and speed according to the type of sample needed for imaging, which can be applied to rapid dynamic imaging of other thick tissues.

On August 10th at 23:00, the research paper "Rapid body imaging of mouse and zebrafish brains using confocal light field microscopy" was also published in Nature Biotechnology.

Many players are laying out, and the diverse brain computer interfaces are becoming increasingly pop