Camelia Bhattacharyya, Amity University Kolkata
The brain, the noted central functioning organ of the body’s machinery has a lot more confidential secrets within itself than we cannot even imagine. The human minds have often tried to hunt for the unknown to gain knowledge about it but have failed due to several limitations. But with time, the never-giving up scientific minds have developed techniques to challenge the limitations; Light-sheet fluorescence microscopy (LSFM) is one of such techniques dealing with imaging the brain and its networks in more detail than previously known.
Previously used tools like functional magnetic resonance and other optogenetic tools are unable to record more specific images due to lack of imaging smaller sizes and also imaging speed and thus unable to capture specific functions going on in the neurons. Miniaturized LSFM on the other hand, has been experimented to capture real fast images and the specific functionality of the neurons, limiting the size of imaging to the neuronal level which is a massive discovery to help neuroscientific studies in the upcoming era. This technique focuses on inserting a miniature photonic neural probe into the living organism’s brain and directing a sheet of laser light on a brain tissue so that the brain’s fluorescent reporters can show some fluorescent activity which is further noted down through a microscopic approach and studied by scientists and researchers. Thus, this technique not only focuses on a real-time approach but also helps to increase the volume of the study only after assuring the accuracy of the results.
This miniaturization of the probes and other technological instruments in the study has proven to ease the process thus promising a better approach towards studying the neural activities of moving animals without posing much harm to their natural tissues. This research if taken further might open a new door for neuroscientists thus enabling several unknown facts of the brain to come to the limelight and used in further studies which would further impact the present treatments in neurology.
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Source:Wesley D. Sacher, Fu-Der Chen, Homeira Moradi-Chameh, Prajay Shah, Ilan Felts Almog, Youngho Jun, Youngho, Ting Hu, JunhoJeong, Andres M. Lozano, Taufik A. Valiante, Laurent C. Moreaux, Joyce K. Poon, Michael L. Roukes, Xianshu Luo, Anton Fomenko, Thomas Lordello, Xinyu Liu, John N. Straguzzi, Trevor M. Fowler, Patrick Lo. Implantable photonic neural probes for light-sheet fluorescence brain imaging. Neurophotonics, 2021; 8 (02) doi:10.1117/1.NPh.8.2.025003
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