Fire Watch

The brain is constantly bombarded with information from inside and outside the body. While researchers try to predict what’s going on when brain cells (neurons) fire impulses at one another, they may now be able to watch their chemical chatter. Here a new speedy fluorescence microscope captures rapid pictures from inside a mouse’s brain, picking out waves of a fluorescently-labelled calcium sensor as impulses pass through an infragranular neuron – a cell type of the cerebral cortex. Capable of targeting cells at different depths in the brain (the red areas here are the deepest), the microscope hopefully will allow researchers to follow impulses travelling between brain areas… as well as watching when they don’t. Neurons must receive the right combination of signals to fire – ‘thresholds’ that neurodegenerative diseases may affect under the watchful eye of this new technology.

Written by John Ankers

John Ankers

Writer

A former researcher in systems biology, John is now an online biology tutor and professional coach supporting the wellbeing of scientists and NHS professionals. He's writing, too, of course.

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• Video by Na Ji, UC Berkeley
• Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA and Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
• Video copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in Nature Methods, March 2020