Carsten Tischbirek

Two-photon Calcium-Imaging of Neuronal Circuits in all Layers of the Mouse Cortex in vivo

Carsten Tischbirek from the Institute of Neuroscience of the Technical University (München, Germany) then gave a presentation on "Two-Photon Calcium-Imaging of Neuronal Circuits in all Layers of the Mouse Cortex in vivo". Imaging of cytosolic Ca2+ transients by two-photon laser scanning microscopy has become a valuable tool to interrogate neuronal activity in the brain of living animals at scales ranging from subcellular compartments such as dendritic spines up to large neuronal populations of entire networks. So far, however, imaging of cortical activity at single-cell resolution was largely restricted to the upper layers of the mouse neocortex, thus precluding a comprehensive capture of neuronal activity in basic cortical processing modules such as columns or barrels. Carsten Tischbirek showed that with the use of the red-shifted fluorescent Ca2+ indicator Cal-590 it is now possible to analyze the response properties of tone-sensitive neurons through the entire depth of the primary auditory cortex.