Mark Schnitzer wants to understand normal cognitive and disease processes at the level of neural circuits. To do this, Schnitzer and his team develop novel ways of imaging the nervous system in behaving animals, with the goal of watching neurons at work. Their approach combines behavioral, electrophysiological, and computational methodologies with high-resolution fluorescence optical imaging capable of resolving individual neurons and dendrites. The work emphasizes understanding the control and learning of motor behaviors, as well as the potential application of newly developed imaging techniques to clinical use in humans.
Neurons across eight areas of the brain team up to process visual information. Researchers have now documented these neurons’ activity at a breadth and resolution never before reported. A microscope lens implanted deep inside a mouse’s brain shows different patterns of neural activity when the mouse interacts with males, females, or other stimuli. Now, researchers have discovered that sexual experience can trigger long-term changes in these brain patterns.