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Juxtacellular recording and morphological identification of single neurons in freely moving rats

Nature Protocols volume 9, pages 2369–2381 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

It is well established that neural circuits consist of a great diversity of cell types, but very little is known about how neuronal diversity contributes to cognition and behavior. One approach to addressing this problem is to directly link cellular diversity to neuronal activity recorded in vivo in behaving animals. Here we describe the technical procedures for obtaining juxtacellular recordings from single neurons in trained rats engaged in exploratory behavior. The recorded neurons can be labeled to allow subsequent anatomical identification. In its current format, the protocol can be used for resolving the cellular identity of spatially modulated neurons (i.e., head-direction cells and grid cells), which form the basis of the animal's internal representation of space, but this approach can easily be extended to other unrestrained behaviors. The procedures described here, from the beginning of animal training to the histological processing of brain sections, can be completed in ∼3–4 weeks.

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Figure 1: Recording durations.
Figure 2: Implant components for obtaining juxtacellular recordings in freely moving animals.
Figure 3: Assembled implant for juxtacellular recordings in freely moving animals.
Figure 4: Morphological identification of a grid cell.
Figure 5: Morphological identification of a head-direction cell.

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Acknowledgements

We thank A. Stern and M. Kunert (Berlin, Germany) and K. Vollmer (Tübingen, Germany) for excellent fine mechanical support, and U. Schneeweiß and J. Steger for excellent technical support. We are particularly grateful to R. Naumann and S. Ray for histological processing of the cells shown in Figures 4 and 5, U. Schneeweiß for reconstructing the neuron shown in Figure 4a and C. Mende for contributions to figures. We thank G. Doron for comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. This work was supported by Neurocure, the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience (BMBF) and Humboldt University, an EU Biotact-grant and a Neuro-behavior European Research Council grant.

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  1. Andrea Burgalossi

    Present address: Present address: Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Tübingen, Germany.,

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  1. Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany

    Qiusong Tang, Michael Brecht & Andrea Burgalossi

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Contributions

A.B. and Q.T. performed experiments in the establishment of the protocol. A.B. and M.B. supervised the experiments. A.B. drafted the manuscript. Q.T., M.B. and A.B. contributed to, and have approved, the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Michael Brecht or Andrea Burgalossi.

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Tang, Q., Brecht, M. & Burgalossi, A. Juxtacellular recording and morphological identification of single neurons in freely moving rats. Nat Protoc 9, 2369–2381 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nprot.2014.161

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