The complexity of the brain and the limitations of existing techniques have long restricted our ability to understand connectivity and the neuronal contributions to certain behaviours, cognition and neurological disorders. With the development of groundbreaking techniques some of these restrictions have now been overcome. This special reprint collection from Nature Reviews Neuroscience in collaboration with Nature Methods is sponsored by Olympus and highlights some of the major recent technical breakthroughs in neuroscience.
Research Highlights
Neural coding: The power of one
Katherine Whalley
doi:10.1038/nrn2329
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 9, 78 (2008)
Neural stem cells: Taking a 'peak' into neurogenesis
Monica Hoyos Flight
doi:10.1038/nrn2300
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 9, 4-5 (2008)
Neuronal circuits: Dissecting learning
Katherine Whalley
doi:10.1038/nrn2347
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 9, 161 (2008)
Mirror neurons: Learning to reflect
Leonie Welberg
doi:10.1038/nrn2243
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 8, 737 (2007)
Progress Articles
Circuit-breakers: optical technologies for probing neural signals and systems
Feng Zhang, Alexander M. Aravanis, Antoine Adamantidis, Luis de Lecea & Karl Deisseroth
doi:10.1038/nrn2192
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 8, 577-581 (2007)
Newly emerging techniques will revolutionize our understanding of the mammalian brain. Deisseroth and colleagues detail the development and use of microbial opsins as optogenetic tools for the study of neural circuits and discuss the use of these tools as potential future therapies for neurological disorders.
A technicolour approach to the connectome
Jeff W. Lichtman, Jean Livet & Joshua R. Sanes
doi:10.1038/nrn2391
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 9, 417-422 (2008)
New technologies promise to decipher whole-brain connectivity at a much greater resolution than ever before. Here, Lichtman, Livet and Sanes, the creators of Brainbow, critically assess the applications and challenges of this technology and those of other existing and emerging technologies.
Reviews
Imaging in vivo: watching the brain in action
Jason N. D. Kerr & Winfried Denk
doi:10.1038/nrn2338
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 9, 195-205 (2008)
Advances in cellular imaging have been crucial for improving our understanding of many aspects of neuroscience. Kerr and Denk describe how sophisticated optical imaging techniques allow us to image activity in single neurons or neuron populations in living animals.
Primary research articles
Two-photon photostimulation and imaging of neural circuits
Volodymyr Nikolenko, Kira E Poskanzer & Rafael Yuste
doi:10.1038/nmeth1105
Nature Methods 4, 943-950 (2007)
We introduce an optical method to stimulate individual neurons in brain slices in any arbitrary spatiotemporal pattern, using two-photon uncaging of MNI-glutamate with beam multiplexing. This method has single-cell and three-dimensional precision. By sequentially stimulating up to a thousand potential presynaptic neurons, we generated detailed functional maps of inputs to a cell. We combined this approach with two-photon calcium imaging in an all-optical method to image and manipulate circuit activity.
Targeted patch-clamp recordings and single-cell electroporation of unlabeled neurons in vivo
Kazuo Kitamura, Benjamin Judkewitz, Masanobu Kano, Winfried Denk & Michael Häusser
doi:10.1038/nmeth1150
Nature Methods 5, 61-67 (2008)
Here we describe an approach for making targeted patch-clamp recordings from single neurons in vivo, visualized by two-photon microscopy. A patch electrode is used to perfuse the extracellular space surrounding the neuron of interest with a fluorescent dye, thus enabling the neuron to be visualized as a negative image ('shadow') and identified on the basis of its somatodendritic structure.
