cosmos

This website contains instructions for setting up Cortical Observation by Synchronous Multifocal Optical Sampling (COSMOS).

• Software repository for processing and analyzing COSMOS data
• CAD files and bill of materials for building COSMOS macroscope
• Protocol and images describing surgical procedure for implanting curved cranial window
• Processed data from imaging sessions used in the manuscript

Kauvar IV*, Machado TA*, et al. Cortical observation by synchronous multifocal optical sampling reveals widespread population encoding of actions, Neuron (2020), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2020.04.023.

Abstract: To advance the measurement of distributed neuronal population representations of targeted motor actions on single trials, we developed an optical method (COSMOS) for tracking neural activity in a largely uncharacterized spatiotemporal regime. COSMOS allowed simultaneous recording of neural dynamics at ∼30 Hz from over a thousand near-cellular resolution neuronal sources spread across the entire dorsal neocortex of awake, behaving mice during a three-option lick-to-target task. We identified spatially distributed neuronal population representations spanning the dorsal cortex that precisely encoded ongoing motor actions on single trials. Neuronal correlations measured at video rate using unaveraged, whole-session data had localized spatial structure, whereas trial-averaged data exhibited widespread correlations. Separable modes of neural activity encoded history-guided motor plans, with similar population dynamics in individual areas throughout cortex. These initial experiments illustrate how COSMOS enables investigation of large-scale cortical dynamics and that information about motor actions is widely shared between areas, potentially underlying distributed computations.