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Feng G, Joseph A, Dholakia K, Shang F, Pfeifer CW, Power D, Padmanabhan K, Schallek J. High-resolution structural and functional retinal imaging in the awake behaving mouse. Commun Biol 2023; 6:572. [PMID: 37248385 PMCID: PMC10227058 DOI: 10.1038/s42003-023-04896-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/18/2022] [Accepted: 05/02/2023] [Indexed: 05/31/2023] Open
Abstract
The laboratory mouse has provided tremendous insight to the underpinnings of mammalian central nervous system physiology. In recent years, it has become possible to image single neurons, glia and vascular cells in vivo by using head-fixed preparations combined with cranial windows to study local networks of activity in the living brain. Such approaches have also succeeded without the use of general anesthesia providing insights to the natural behaviors of the central nervous system. However, the same has not yet been developed for the eye, which is constantly in motion. Here we characterize a novel head-fixed preparation that enables high-resolution adaptive optics retinal imaging at the single-cell level in awake-behaving mice. We reveal three new functional attributes of the normal eye that are overlooked by anesthesia: 1) High-frequency, low-amplitude eye motion of the mouse that is only present in the awake state 2) Single-cell blood flow in the mouse retina is reduced under anesthesia and 3) Mouse retinae thicken in response to ketamine/xylazine anesthesia. Here we show key benefits of the awake-behaving preparation that enables study of retinal physiology without anesthesia to study the normal retinal physiology in the mouse.
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Affiliation(s)
- Guanping Feng
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 14620, USA
- Center for Visual Science, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 14627, USA
| | - Aby Joseph
- Center for Visual Science, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 14627, USA
- The Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 14620, USA
| | - Kosha Dholakia
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 14620, USA
- Center for Visual Science, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 14627, USA
| | - Fei Shang
- Center for Visual Science, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 14627, USA
- Department of Neuroscience, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 14642, USA
| | - Charles W Pfeifer
- Center for Visual Science, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 14627, USA
- Flaum Eye Institute, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 14642, USA
| | - Derek Power
- Center for Visual Science, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 14627, USA
| | - Krishnan Padmanabhan
- Center for Visual Science, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 14627, USA
- Department of Neuroscience, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 14642, USA
- Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 14642, USA
| | - Jesse Schallek
- Center for Visual Science, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 14627, USA.
- Department of Neuroscience, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 14642, USA.
- Flaum Eye Institute, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 14642, USA.
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Ahn J, Jeong Y, Cha S, Lee JY, Yoo Y, Goo YS. High amplitude pulses on the same charge condition efficiently elicit bipolar cell-mediated retinal ganglion cell responses in the degenerate retina. Biomed Eng Lett 2023; 13:129-140. [PMID: 37124107 PMCID: PMC10130300 DOI: 10.1007/s13534-023-00260-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/12/2022] [Revised: 12/19/2022] [Accepted: 01/09/2023] [Indexed: 02/01/2023] Open
Abstract
Retinal pigmentosa (RP) patients lose vision due to the loss of photoreceptors. Retinal prostheses bypass the dead photoreceptors by electrically stimulating surviving retinal neurons, such as bipolar cells or retinal ganglion cells (RGCs). In previous studies, stimulus charge has been mainly optimized to maximize the RGC response to electrical stimulation. This study aimed to investigate the effect of amplitude and duration even under the same charge condition on eliciting RGC spikes in the wild-type and degenerate retinas. Wild-type (WT) Sprague-Dawley rats were used as the normal retinal model, and Pde6b knockout rats were used as a retinal degeneration (RD) model. Electrically-evoked RGC spikes were recorded from isolated rat retinas using an 8 × 8 multielectrode array. The same charge was maintained (10 or 20 nC), and electrical stimulation was applied to WT and RD retinas, adjusting the amplitude and duration of the 1st phase of biphasic pulses. In the pulse modulation of the 1st phase, high amplitude (short duration) pulses induced more RGC spikes than low amplitude (long duration) pulses. Both WT and RD retinas showed a significant reduction in the number of RGC spikes upon stimulation with lower amplitude (longer duration) pulses. In clinical trials where stimulus charges are delivered to the degenerate retina of blind patients, high amplitude (short duration) pulses would help elicit more RGC spikes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jungryul Ahn
- Department of Physiology, Chungbuk National University School of Medicine, Cheongju, South Korea
| | - Yurim Jeong
- Department of Physiology, Chungbuk National University School of Medicine, Cheongju, South Korea
| | - Seongkwang Cha
- Department of Physiology, Chungbuk National University School of Medicine, Cheongju, South Korea
| | - Joo Yong Lee
- Department of Ophthalmology, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea
| | - Yongseok Yoo
- School of Computer Science and Engineering, Soongsil University, Seoul, South Korea
| | - Yong Sook Goo
- Department of Physiology, Chungbuk National University School of Medicine, Cheongju, South Korea
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Pamplona D, Hilgen G, Hennig MH, Cessac B, Sernagor E, Kornprobst P. Receptive field estimation in large visual neuron assemblies using a super-resolution approach. J Neurophysiol 2022; 127:1334-1347. [PMID: 35235437 DOI: 10.1152/jn.00076.2021] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/22/2022] Open
Abstract
Computing the spike-triggered average (STA) is a simple method to estimate the sensory neurons' linear receptive fields (RFs). For random, uncorrelated stimuli the STA provides an unbiased RF estimate, but in practice, white noise is not a feasible stimulus as it usually evokes only weak responses. Therefore, for a visual stimulus, it is often used images of randomly modulated blocks of pixels. This solution naturally limits the resolution at which an RF can be obtained. Here we show that this limitation can be overcome by using a simple super-resolution technique. We define a novel type of stimulus, the Shifted White Noise (SWN), by introducing random spatial shifts in the usual stimulus in order to increase the resolution of the measurements. In simulated data we show that the average error using the SWN was 1.7 times smaller than when using the classical stimulus, with successful mapping of 2.3 times more neurons, covering a broader range of RF sizes. Moreover, successful RF mapping was achieved with short recordings of about one minute of activity, more than 10 times more efficient than the classical white noise stimulus. In recordings from mouse retinal ganglion cells with large scale microelectrode arrays, we could map 18 times more RFs covering a broader range of sizes. In summary, here we show that randomly shifting the usual white noise stimulus significantly improves RFs estimation, and requires only short recordings. It is straight forward to extend this method into the time dimension and adapt it to other sensory modalities.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniela Pamplona
- Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Techniques Avancées, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Palaiseau, France.,Université Côte d'Azur, Inria, France
| | - Gerrit Hilgen
- Biosciences Institute, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom.,Applied Sciences, Health and Life Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
| | - Matthias Helge Hennig
- Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
| | | | - Evelyne Sernagor
- Biosciences Institute, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
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Ahn J, Yoo Y, Goo YS. Spike-triggered Clustering for Retinal Ganglion Cell Classification. Exp Neurobiol 2020; 29:433-452. [PMID: 33321473 PMCID: PMC7788309 DOI: 10.5607/en20029] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/10/2020] [Revised: 11/24/2020] [Accepted: 11/25/2020] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), the retina's output neurons, encode visual information through spiking. The RGC receptive field (RF) represents the basic unit of visual information processing in the retina. RFs are commonly estimated using the spike-triggered average (STA), which is the average of the stimulus patterns to which a given RGC is sensitive. Whereas STA, based on the concept of the average, is simple and intuitive, it leaves more complex structures in the RFs undetected. Alternatively, spike-triggered covariance (STC) analysis provides information on second-order RF statistics. However, STC is computationally cumbersome and difficult to interpret. Thus, the objective of this study was to propose and validate a new computational method, called spike-triggered clustering (STCL), specific for multimodal RFs. Specifically, RFs were fit with a Gaussian mixture model, which provides the means and covariances of multiple RF clusters. The proposed method recovered bipolar stimulus patterns in the RFs of ON-OFF cells, while the STA identified only ON and OFF RGCs, and the remaining RGCs were labeled as unknown types. In contrast, our new STCL analysis distinguished ON-OFF RGCs from the ON, OFF, and unknown RGC types classified by STA. Thus, the proposed method enables us to include ON-OFF RGCs prior to retinal information analysis.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jungryul Ahn
- Department of Physiology, Chungbuk National University School of Medicine, Cheongju 28644, Korea
| | - Yongseok Yoo
- Department of Electronics Engineering, Incheon National University, Incheon 22012, Korea
| | - Yong Sook Goo
- Department of Physiology, Chungbuk National University School of Medicine, Cheongju 28644, Korea
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Ahn J, Phan HL, Cha S, Koo KI, Yoo Y, Goo YS. Synchrony of Spontaneous Burst Firing between Retinal Ganglion Cells Across Species. Exp Neurobiol 2020; 29:285-299. [PMID: 32921641 PMCID: PMC7492847 DOI: 10.5607/en20025] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/07/2020] [Revised: 08/27/2020] [Accepted: 08/31/2020] [Indexed: 01/16/2023] Open
Abstract
Neurons communicate with other neurons in response to environmental changes. Their goal is to transmit information to their targets reliably. A burst, which consists of multiple spikes within a short time interval, plays an essential role in enhancing the reliability of information transmission through synapses. In the visual system, retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), the output neurons of the retina, show bursting activity and transmit retinal information to the lateral geniculate neuron of the thalamus. In this study, to extend our interest to the population level, the burstings of multiple RGCs were simultaneously recorded using a multi-channel recording system. As the first step in network analysis, we focused on investigating the pairwise burst correlation between two RGCs. Furthermore, to assess if the population bursting is preserved across species, we compared the synchronized bursting of RGCs between marmoset monkey (callithrix jacchus), one species of the new world monkeys and mouse (C57BL/6J strain). First, monkey RGCs showed a larger number of spikes within a burst, while the inter-spike interval, burst duration, and inter-burst interval were smaller compared with mouse RGCs. Monkey RGCs showed a strong burst synchronization between RGCs, whereas mouse RGCs showed no correlated burst firing. Monkey RGC pairs showed significantly higher burst synchrony and mutual information than mouse RGC pairs did. Comprehensively, through this study, we emphasize that two species have a different bursting activity of RGCs and different burst synchronization suggesting two species have distinctive retinal processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jungryul Ahn
- Department of Physiology, Chungbuk National University School of Medicine, Cheongju 28644, Korea
| | - Huu Lam Phan
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Ulsan, Ulsan 44610, Korea
| | - Seongkwang Cha
- Department of Physiology, Chungbuk National University School of Medicine, Cheongju 28644, Korea
| | - Kyo-In Koo
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Ulsan, Ulsan 44610, Korea
| | - Yongseok Yoo
- Department of Electronics Engineering, Incheon National University, Incheon 22012, Korea
| | - Yong Sook Goo
- Department of Physiology, Chungbuk National University School of Medicine, Cheongju 28644, Korea
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