Optogenetic modulation of neural circuits has opened new avenues into neuroscience research, allowing the control of
cellular activity of genetically specified cell types. Optogenetics is still underdeveloped in the peripheral nervous system,
yet there are many applications related to sensorimotor function, pain and nerve injury that would be of great benefit. We
recently established a method for non-invasive, transdermal optogenetic stimulation of the facial muscles that control
whisker movements in mice (Park et al., 2016, eLife, e14140)1. Here we present results comparing the effects of
optogenetic stimulation of whisker movements in mice that express channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) selectively in either the
facial motor nerve (ChAT-ChR2 mice) or muscle (Emx1-ChR2 or ACTA1-ChR2 mice). We tracked changes in nerve
and muscle function before and up to 14 days after nerve transection. Optogenetic 460 nm transdermal stimulation of the
distal cut nerve showed that nerve degeneration progresses rapidly over 24 hours. In contrast, the whisker movements
evoked by optogenetic muscle stimulation were up-regulated after denervation, including increased maximum
protraction amplitude, increased sensitivity to low-intensity stimuli, and more sustained muscle contractions (reduced
adaptation). Our results indicate that peripheral optogenetic stimulation is a promising technique for probing the
timecourse of functional changes of both nerve and muscle, and holds potential for restoring movement after paralysis
induced by nerve damage or motoneuron degeneration.
Studying the temporal and spectral characteristics of brain function under spontaneous activity has been recently receiving great interest in the field of neuroscience. By combining wavelet coherence and multivariate permutation test, this paper presents a new method for investigating changes in functional connectivity under spontaneous activity. The proposed method does not impose any prior assumption about the frequency bands that are involved in the activity, nor on the distribution of the data. The proposed method is applied on data obtained from widefield transcranial calcium imaging of GCaMP6 transgenic mice. Results on how function connectivity corresponding to two forms of spontaneous activity differ across frequency and space are presented.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.