A new ground-breaking technology, jointly developed by UCL scientists, which simultaneously records and manipulates the activity of neurons deep within the brain could transform our understanding of neural circuits and neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.
The device, known as Neuropixels Opto and researched in mice, it integrates two powerful but traditionally separate techniques – electrophysiology (the study of the electrical activity of living cells) and optogenetics (combining genetics and optics to control cells). They form a single detector, allowing unprecedented insight into how individual neurons in the brain work and interact.
Posted on methods of nature, The system allows researchers to monitor the electrical activity of hundreds of neurons while also selectively activating or silencing specific cells using light.
Developed by an international team, led by scientists at UCL and the Allen Institute (Seattle, USA), the research is part of a £15 million project, funded by the Wellcome Trust, the Allen Institute and other partners, investigating Neuropixels detector technology.
Scientists believe Neuropixels Opto it could transform our understanding of the brain by revealing how individual neurons interact within complex circuits to drive behavior, perception and disease.
The brain processes information through complex patterns of electrical activity, with billions of neurons communicating via fast electrical signals.
Understanding how these signals cause behavior, thought and disease requires tools that can observe and influence neuronal activity.
Until now, scientists have typically relied on separate approaches: electrophysiological probes to record neural activity and optogenetics to control it. Combining the two has proven difficult, particularly in deeper areas of the brain, where delivering light without disrupting sensitive recordings is technically difficult.
Neuropixels Opto overcomes these limitations by integrating both capabilities into a single device, allowing simultaneous measurement and manipulation of neural circuits.”
Matteo Carandini, Co-Author, Professor, UCL Institute of Ophthalmology
A detector smaller than a human hair
At the heart of the technology is a silicon detector narrower than a human hair, equipped with hundreds of recording sites as well as tiny light emitters.
These features allow the probe to capture detailed electrical signals from neurons distributed throughout its length while delivering precisely targeted light stimulation to multiple locations in the brain.
Professor Carandini, Professor of Optical Neuroscience at UCL, added: “This makes it possible, for the first time, to directly test how specific neurons influence the activity of surrounding circuits – revealing causal relationships between neuronal activity and brain function.
“The ability to record and control neuronal activity in the same experiment represents a major advance for neuroscience.”
Co-lead author Dr Karolina Socha, Researcher at UCL’s Institute of Ophthalmology, has begun using these probes to investigate the function of the cerebral cortex – responsible for many of the brain’s most advanced abilities. She says her mouse studies provide some surprising observations.
“By selectively activating or silencing specific types of neurons while monitoring the response of nearby cells, we can begin to map how different components of the brain work together to produce behavior,” he said.
“We were surprised to find that the activity of neurons in the cortex can be remarkably localized. Until now, we thought that neurons are so interconnected that there would be no way to activate some of them without activating many others. The new Neuropixels Opto The detectors revealed that these neurons can work not only in coordination but also rather independently.”
This approach is expected to help address long-standing questions in neuroscience, including how information is processed in brain regions and how specific neural circuits contribute to perception, learning and decision-making.
Implications for the study of brain disorders
Technology can also have important implications for understanding neurological and psychiatric conditions.
Many disorders, including schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, are related to disturbances in the way neurons communicate. By providing a clearer picture of how neural circuits work in both healthy and diseased states, Neuropixels Opto could support the development of more targeted therapies.
The development of Neuropixels Opto it involved a broad collaboration between institutions in the US, UK and Europe, along with engineering partners.
The work is part of a broader effort to develop advanced tools for studying the brain at scale, with the goal of making high-resolution, large-scale neural recording more accessible to researchers around the world.
A step forward for neuroscience tools
Neuropixels are next-generation silicon probes that act like tiny electrodes, allowing scientists to record the electrical activity of hundreds of neurons simultaneously in different areas of the brain.
By packing about 1,000 nearby recording sites into an ultrathin detector, they make it possible to capture high-resolution signals from individual brain cells while simultaneously monitoring large neural networks.
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