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SUMMARY:BMI Progress Reports 2021 // Prof. Ramdya's Lab\, Laura Hermans: E
 xamining neural responses to injury and drug ingestion through long-term i
 maging in behaving adult Drosophila
DTSTART:20211103T121500
DTEND:20211103T130000
DTSTAMP:20260415T235853Z
UID:712b083a63d47ec6ddfae53862468ee20a069e7ee8cf6d4d5406d47a
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Laura Hermans\nThe dynamics and connectivity of neural circuit
 s continuously change during an animal's lifetime on timescales ranging fr
 om milliseconds to days. Therefore\, to investigate how biological network
 s accomplish remarkable cognitive and behavioral tasks\, minimally invasiv
 e methods are needed to perform repeated measurements\, or perturbations o
 f neural circuits in behaving animals across time. Such tools have been de
 veloped to investigate the brain but similar approaches are lacking for co
 mprehensively and repeatedly recording motor circuits in behaving animals.
  Here we describe a suite of microfabricated technologies that enable long
 -term\, minimally invasive optical recordings of the adult Drosophila mela
 nogaster ventral nerve cord (VNC) — neural tissues that are functionally
  equivalent to the vertebrate spinal cord. These tools consist of (i) a ma
 nipulator arm that permits the insertion of (ii) a compliant implant into 
 the thorax to expose the imaging region of interest\; (iii) a numbered\, t
 ransparent polymer window that encloses and provides optical access to the
  inside of the thorax\, and (iv) a hinged remounting stage that allows gen
 tle and repeated tethering of an implanted animal for two-photon imaging. 
 We validate and illustrate the utility of our toolkit in several ways. Fir
 st\, we show that the thoracic implant and window have minimal impact on a
 nimal behavior and survival while also enabling neural recordings from ind
 ividual animals across at least one month. Second\, we follow the degradat
 ion of chordotonal organ mechanosensory nerve terminals in the VNC over we
 eks after leg amputation. Third\, because our tools allow recordings of th
 e VNC with the gut intact\, we discover waves of neural population activit
 y following ingestion of a high-concentration caffeine solution. In summar
 y\, our microfabricated toolkit makes it possible to longitudinally monito
 r anatomical and functional changes in premotor and motor neural circuits\
 , and more generally opens up the long-term investigation of thoracic tiss
 ues
LOCATION:Online
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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