Approaches

Patch Clamp

Patch-clamp recording is the Gold Standard approach in Neuroscience for measuring action potentials, synaptic events and ion channel activities.

Patching a mitral cell in OB slice preparation

Action potentials evoked by depolarizing current

Spontaneous excitatory postsynaptic currents

Ih current evoked by hyperpolarizing voltage steps

32-channel Recording in Awake Animals

This approach enables us to reliably determine neuronal excitability and network excitation-inhibition balance by recording neuronal action potentials at the population level and network operation at many assessment points.

Awake Recording

Local Field Potential

Spiking Activities

Spike Sorting

32-Channel Linear Neural Probe

In vivo electrophysiology

Opto- and Chemogenetics

These cutting edge technologies are leveraged to anatomically tracing axonal projections of a specific population of neurons in the brain regardless of distance and selectively manipulate activities of these cells and related circuits. Both can be integrated with electrophysiology or behavioral assays for functional readouts.

Confocal image of a coronal mouse olfactory bulb (OB) section.

Red: ChR2-mCherry expression in CCKergic projection neurons; Green: GFP expression in dopaminergic interneurons

A recorded CCKergic projection neuron in the mouse OB

Green: ChR2-EYFP; Red: biocytin-CY3 labeling

Confocal image of a horizontal mouse OB section

Red: ChR2-mCherry expression in CCKergic projection neurons; Green: GFP expression in GABAergic interneurons

CCKergic projection neurons and GABAeric interneurons in the OB.

Red: ChR2-mCherry expression in CCKergic projection neurons; Green: GFP expression in GABAergic interneurons

ChR2-EYFP expression in OB dopaminergic interneuron.

A: horizontal OB section. B: dopaminergic interneurons expressing tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) and ChR2-EFYP. C: reconstruction of a recorded OB dopaminergic interneuron.

ChR2-EYFP expression in OB mitral cell axons projecting to the lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC).

A: schematic illustrating virus (AAV) injection into the OB. B: ChR2-EYFP expression in the OB. C: coronal brain slice containing the LEC showing ChR2-EYFP expression only in layer I which receive axons projection from the OB (green).

OB GABAergic transmission from short axon cells (SACs) to external tufted cells (ETCs).

A: optical stimulation (blue bar) of SACs terminates spontaneous firing in ETCs in the presence of NBQX and APV . B: Addition of gabazine (GBZ) abolishes the optical stimulation-evoked firing termination in ETCs.

Dopamine (DA) inhibits the OB-LEC transmission.

A&B: representative voltage clamp traces showing the effects of DA on the excitatory postsynaptic currents (EPSCs) in LEC fan cells elicited by optical stimulation of OB projection neuron axons in LEC layer I .

Selective expression of DREADD in OB tufted cells

Chemogenetic silencing active OB tufted cell

In vivo optophysiology

Fiber Photometry

(for in vivo measurement of Ca2+ or neurotransmitters)

FP3002 System

FP3002 is our fiber photometry system equipped with three excitation wavelengths: 470 nm for imaging of green calcium indicators (e.g. GCaMP), 560 nm for imaging of red-shifted calcium indicators (e.g. RCaMP), and 415 nm for an interleaved isosbestic control to eliminate motion artifacts (i.e. calcium-independent signals). It is also featured by Real-time processing and flexible control with a new computer interface, live data processing of 4 channels to collect analytical measurements for accurate across-subject comparisons.

Real time measurement of Ca2+ fluctuations

This allows us to simultaneously record intracellular Ca2+ activities in specific populations of neurons or glial cells from four different brain regions of the same animal or in the same brain region from 4 different animals.

4-channel Fiber Photometry

This system enables us to measure intracellular Ca2+ changes or transmitter levels or release in tissues simultaneously in 4 animals while they are behaving in the Open Field testing boxes.

3-D Visualization of Neural Circuits

Light-sheet imaging neural circuits after whole brain clearing

Neuronal Reconstruction

Granule Cell in Hippocampal Dentate Gyrus

Hippocampal Interneuron

Pyramidal Cell in Hippocampal CA1 Region

Pyramidal Cell in the Anterior Olfactory Nucleus (AON)

AON Interneuron

Behavioral Phenotyping

3-chamber social interaction

This behavioral paradigm allows us to assess animal's olfaction-dependent social interaction or novelty recognition

Agora Maze (SocioBox)

This social interaction system is similar to the 3-chamber system but more challenging as the testing animal needs to recognize one stranger animal from the other 4 familiar ones. Thus, it is supposed to be more robust for revealing subtle effects.

Open Field Test

This 4-chamber Open Field testing system allows us to simultaneously measure the general motor functions as well as anxiety levels of 4 animals.

Barnes Maze

This dry-land system is for measuring animal's spatial memory, similar to the well-known Morris water maze but with much less stressful inpact on the testing animal.

Buried Food Test

This approach assesses animal's sensitivity to food odors by measuring the latency for the animals to identify the invisible food by the sense of smell.

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