Two-photon image of neural tissue controlling the front legs of the fly. Neurons express fluorescent proteins to visualize neural activity (cyan) and neural anatomy (red). (Credit: Pavan Ramdya, EPFL)
A new neural recording technique developed by EPFL bioengineers enables for the first time the comprehensive measurement of neural circuits that control limb movement. Tested on the fruit fly, results from the technique may inspire the development of more sophisticated robotic control approaches. One of the major goals of biology, medicine, and robotics is to understand how limbs are controlled by circuits of neurons working together. And as if that is not complex enough, a meaningful study of limb activity also has to take place while animals are behaving and moving. The problem is that it is virtually impossible to get a complete view of the activity of motor and premotor circuits that control limbs during behavior, in either vertebrates or invertebrates. Scientists from the lab of Pavan Ramdya at EPFL's Brain Mind Institute and Interfaculty Institute of Bioengineering have developed a new method for recording the activity of limb control neural circuits in the popular model organism, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster . The method uses an advanced imaging technique called "two-photon microscopy" to observe the firing of fluorescently labeled neurons that become brighter when they are active.
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