Neuropixels probes (or "Neuropixels") are electrodes developed in 2017 to record the activity of hundreds of neurons in the brain. The probes are based on CMOS technology and have 1,000 recording sites arranged in two rows on a thin, 1-cm long shank. [1] [2]
The probes are used in hundreds of neuroscience laboratories including the International Brain Laboratory, to record brain activity mostly in mice and rats. By revealing the activity of vast numbers of neurons, Neuropixels probes are allowing new approaches [3] to the study of brain processes such as sensory processing, decision making, [4] internal state, [5] and emotions [6] and to create brain-machine interfaces. [7] [8]
The probes were announced in 2017. [9] They are designed and fabricated by imec, an electronics research center in Belgium. In 2022, Neuropixels probes were inserted in human patients. [10]
Computational neuroscience is a branch of neuroscience which employs mathematics, computer science, theoretical analysis and abstractions of the brain to understand the principles that govern the development, structure, physiology and cognitive abilities of the nervous system.
Behavioral neuroscience, also known as biological psychology, biopsychology, or psychobiology, is the application of the principles of biology to the study of physiological, genetic, and developmental mechanisms of behavior in humans and other animals.
Brainwave entrainment, also referred to as brainwave synchronization or neural entrainment, refers to the observation that brainwaves will naturally synchronize to the rhythm of periodic external stimuli, such as flickering lights, speech, music, or tactile stimuli.
Neural oscillations, or brainwaves, are rhythmic or repetitive patterns of neural activity in the central nervous system. Neural tissue can generate oscillatory activity in many ways, driven either by mechanisms within individual neurons or by interactions between neurons. In individual neurons, oscillations can appear either as oscillations in membrane potential or as rhythmic patterns of action potentials, which then produce oscillatory activation of post-synaptic neurons. At the level of neural ensembles, synchronized activity of large numbers of neurons can give rise to macroscopic oscillations, which can be observed in an electroencephalogram. Oscillatory activity in groups of neurons generally arises from feedback connections between the neurons that result in the synchronization of their firing patterns. The interaction between neurons can give rise to oscillations at a different frequency than the firing frequency of individual neurons. A well-known example of macroscopic neural oscillations is alpha activity.
Matteo Carandini is a neuroscientist who studies the visual system. He is currently a professor at University College London, where he co-directs the Cortical Processing Laboratory with Kenneth D Harris.
Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC) is an international research & development organization, active in the fields of nanoelectronics and digital technologies with headquarters in Belgium. Luc Van den hove has served as President and CEO since 2009.
Pendleton Read Montague, Jr. is an American neuroscientist and popular science author. He is the director of the Human Neuroimaging Lab and Computational Psychiatry Unit at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC in Roanoke, Virginia, where he also holds the title of the inaugural Virginia Tech Carilion Vernon Mountcastle Research Professor. Montague is also a professor in the department of physics at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia and professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine at Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine.
Optogenetics is a biological technique to control the activity of neurons or other cell types with light. This is achieved by expression of light-sensitive ion channels, pumps or enzymes specifically in the target cells. On the level of individual cells, light-activated enzymes and transcription factors allow precise control of biochemical signaling pathways. In systems neuroscience, the ability to control the activity of a genetically defined set of neurons has been used to understand their contribution to decision making, learning, fear memory, mating, addiction, feeding, and locomotion. In a first medical application of optogenetic technology, vision was partially restored in a blind patient with Retinitis pigmentosa.
GCaMP is a genetically encoded calcium indicator (GECI) initially developed in 2001 by Junichi Nakai. It is a synthetic fusion of green fluorescent protein (GFP), calmodulin (CaM), and M13, a peptide sequence from myosin light-chain kinase. When bound to Ca2+, GCaMP fluoresces green with a peak excitation wavelength of 480 nm and a peak emission wavelength of 510 nm. It is used in biological research to measure intracellular Ca2+ levels both in vitro and in vivo using virally transfected or transgenic cell and animal lines. The genetic sequence encoding GCaMP can be inserted under the control of promoters exclusive to certain cell types, allowing for cell-type specific expression of GCaMP. Since Ca2+ is a second messenger that contributes to many cellular mechanisms and signaling pathways, GCaMP allows researchers to quantify the activity of Ca2+-based mechanisms and study the role of Ca2+ ions in biological processes of interest.
In neuroscience, the critical brain hypothesis states that certain biological neuronal networks work near phase transitions. Experimental recordings from large groups of neurons have shown bursts of activity, so-called neuronal avalanches, with sizes that follow a power law distribution. These results, and subsequent replication on a number of settings, led to the hypothesis that the collective dynamics of large neuronal networks in the brain operates close to the critical point of a phase transition. According to this hypothesis, the activity of the brain would be continuously transitioning between two phases, one in which activity will rapidly reduce and die, and another where activity will build up and amplify over time. In criticality, the brain capacity for information processing is enhanced, so subcritical, critical and slightly supercritical branching process of thoughts could describe how human and animal minds function.
The Sainsbury Wellcome Centre (SWC) is a neuroscience research institute located in London, United Kingdom. The SWC is part of University College London (UCL), but sits outside of the faculty structure. It is funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation and Wellcome.
Robin Angus Silver is Professor of Neuroscience and a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow at University College London. His laboratory studies neurotransmission and artificial neural networks by combining in vitro and in vivo experimental approaches with quantitative analysis and computational models developed in silico.
The International Brain Laboratory (IBL) is a collaborative research group that aims to develop the first global model of decision making in mice. In its first phase, IBL members are recording 100,000's of neurons across virtually all brain structures in mice performing the very same decision. IBL was officially launched in September 2017 thanks to a $10 million grant from Simons Foundation and a £10 million grant from the Wellcome Trust.
Sergiu P. Pașca is a Romanian-American scientist and physician at Stanford University in California. He is known for creating and developing stem cell-based models of the human brain and applying organoids and assembloids to gain insights into neuropsychiatric disease.
Kenneth D. Harris is a neuroscientist at University College London. He is most known for his contributions to the understanding of the neural code used by vast populations of neurons. Among his discoveries is the finding that populations in sensory areas of the brain also code for body movements. Harris has contributed to the development of silicon probes and most recently of Neuropixels probes. With these probes, he and his team discovered that engagement in a task activates neurons throughout the brain.
Carsen Stringer is an American computational neuroscientist and Group Leader at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Janelia Research Campus. Stringer uses machine learning and deep neural networks to visualize large scale neural recordings and then probe the neural computations that give rise to visual processing in mice. Stringer has also developed several novel software packages that enable cell segmentation and robust analyses of neural recordings and mouse behavior.
Sonja Hofer is a German neuroscientist studying the neural basis of sensory perception and sensory-guided decision-making at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour. Her research focuses on how the brain processes visual information, how neural networks are shaped by experience and learning, and how they integrate visual signals with other information in order to interpret the outside world and guide behaviour. She received her undergraduate degree from the Technical University of Munich, her PhD at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried, Germany, and completed a post doctorate at the University College London. After holding an Assistant Professorship at the Biozentrum University of Basel in Switzerland for five years, she now is a group leader and Professor at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour since 2018.
Fiber photometry is a calcium imaging technique that captures 'bulk' or population-level calcium (Ca2+) activity from specific cell-types within a brain region or functional network in order to study neural circuits Population-level calcium activity can be correlated with behavioral tasks, such as spatial learning, memory recall and goal-directed behaviors. The technique involves the surgical implantation of fiber optics into the brains of living animals. The benefits to researchers are that optical fibers are simpler to implant, less invasive and less expensive than other calcium methods, and there is less weight and stress on the animal, as compared to miniscopes. It also allows for imaging of multiple interacting brain regions and integration with other neuroscience techniques. The limitations of fiber photometry are low cellular and spatial resolution, and the fact that animals must be securely tethered to a rigid fiber bundle, which may impact the naturalistic behavior of smaller mammals such as mice.
Neural synchrony is the correlation of brain activity across two or more people over time. In social and affective neuroscience, neural synchrony specifically refers to the degree of similarity between the spatio-temporal neural fluctuations of multiple people. This phenomenon represents the convergence and coupling of different people's neurocognitive systems, and it is thought to be the neural substrate for many forms of interpersonal dynamics and shared experiences. Some research also refers to neural synchrony as inter-brain synchrony, brain-to-brain coupling, inter-subject correlation, between-brain connectivity, or neural coupling. In the current literature, neural synchrony is notably distinct from intra-brain synchrony—sometimes also called neural synchrony—which denotes the coupling of activity across regions of a single individual's brain.
Tom Mrsic-Flogel is an experimental neuroscientist. He is Director of the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre and a Professor in Neuroscience at University College London (UCL). Mrsic-Flogel is a founding member of the International Brain Laboratory.