248 / 2024-08-25 10:31:49

Concurrent imaging of burst firing neurons and vascular oxygen supply at high spatiotemporal resolution in the awake mouse brain

neurovascular coupling,concurrent imaging of neuronal activity and vascular oxygen,high spatiotemporal resolution imaging,in vivo calcium imaging,blood oxygenation imaging

Neural activity in the brain relies on oxygen supply through cerebral blood microcirculation. Imaging of neurovascular coupling is essential for understanding mechanisms underlying brain functions and cerebral diseases. Yet, current imaging methods suffer from low spatiotemporal resolution to resolve specific coupling networks or lack functional blood oxygen metabolism information. Here, we show that a concurrent confocal fluorescence and photoacoustic microscopic technique mitigates these limitations and achieves imaging of concomitant firing of single neurons and vascular oxygen supply in the awake mouse brain. We demonstrate the capability of this technique by performing in vivo experiments involving anaesthesia and hypoxia challenges, as well as whisker and electrical stimulations of the mice. We established correlations among neuronal activity, blood vessel diameter and blood oxygen saturation. Our technique may allow to obtain a better understanding of the complex interplay between neurons and blood vessels in the brain and thus is a promising tool in the study of neurovascular coupling in health and disease.