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Chronic microsensors for longitudinal, subsecond dopamine detection in behaving animals

Nature Methods volume 7, pages 126–129 (2010)Cite this article

Abstract

Neurotransmission operates on a millisecond timescale but is changed by normal experience or neuropathology over days to months. Despite the importance of long-term neurotransmitter dynamics, no technique exists to track these changes in a subject from day to day over extended periods of time. Here we describe and characterize a microsensor that can detect the neurotransmitter dopamine with subsecond temporal resolution over months in vivo in rats and mice.

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Figure 1: Chronic carbon-fiber microsensor.
Figure 2: In vivo fidelity of chronic carbon-fiber microsensors.
Figure 3: Long-term fidelity of chronic microsensors in vivo.

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Acknowledgements

We thank S. Barnes for technical assistance and M. Walton and W. Shain for useful discussions. This work was supported by the University of Washington Royalties Research Fund and the US National Institutes of Health (R01-MH079292 to P.E.M.P.; R21-DA024140 to P.E.M.P.; and R01-DA014486 to N.S.). J.J.C. was supported by F32-DA024540, M.J.W. was supported by T32-AA007455 (to M. Larimer), J.O.G. was supported by T32-GM007270 (to D. Kimelman), and A.S.H., J.G.P. and E.A.H. were supported by T32-DA007278 (to C. Chavkin).

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Author notes

  1. Jeremy J Clark and Stefan G Sandberg: These authors contributed equally to the work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Department of Pharmacology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA

    Jeremy J Clark, Stefan G Sandberg, Matthew J Wanat, Jerylin O Gan, Eric A Horne, Andrew S Hart, Christina A Akers, Ingo Willuhn, Vicente Martinez, Scott B Evans, Nephi Stella & Paul E M Phillips

  2. Graduate Program in Neurobiology and Behavior, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA

    Jerylin O Gan, Andrew S Hart, Nephi Stella & Paul E M Phillips

  3. Department of Biochemistry, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA

    Jones G Parker

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  1. Jeremy J Clark
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Contributions

P.E.M.P. conceived the work; S.B.E. optimized the microsensor design; J.J.C., S.G.S., N.S. and P.E.M.P. designed experiments and prepared the manuscript; J.J.C., S.G.S., M.J.W., J.O.G., E.A.H., A.S.H., J.G.P., C.A.A., I.W. and V.M. collected and analyzed data.

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Correspondence to Paul E M Phillips.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary Figures 1–5, Supplementary Tables 1–2 and Supplementary Note (PDF 1147 kb)

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Clark, J., Sandberg, S., Wanat, M. et al. Chronic microsensors for longitudinal, subsecond dopamine detection in behaving animals. Nat Methods 7, 126–129 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.1412

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