Spatiotemporal Motifs of Cerebral Theta Oscillations in Freely Moving Mice
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Date
2024-08-07
Authors
Sattler, Nicholas
Journal Title
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
Mice are the most commonly used mammal in systems neuroscience, yet the ability to implement large-scale neural recordings and behavioral monitoring in freely moving conditions has remained methodologically challenging. Due to these difficulties, traditional methods resort to heavily restraining mice in “head-fixed conditions” to achieve stable recordings of neural activity and behavioral monitoring. Such practices, however, drastically restrict the flexibility of both their behavior and the neural activity intended to be studied in the first place. In freely moving conditions, movement-related activity across the cerebral cortex has been shown to be organized by theta oscillations. While there has been significant progress in the ability to simultaneously record from large numbers of neurons using calcium imaging and electrophysiological probes, our understanding of theta oscillations on global cortical function has similarly been stymied by these method’s shortcomings in temporal resolution and spatial scale respectively.This dissertation aims to address these issues through the development and integration of new methodologies. In Chapter II, I present a novel head-mounted camera system for monitoring freely moving mice. The advantages of this system allow large-scale electrophysiological recordings to be paired with multi-camera headsets, enabling the ability to simultaneously record the fine movements of the eyes, ears, whiskers, nostrils, and visual field in freely moving conditions. In Chapter III, I utilize these techniques to identify a distinct behavioral pattern of the nostrils and ears during freely moving mouse behavior. Additionally, through the development and integration of cortex-wide electrocorticography —a method of electrophysiology that records across large areas of the cortex at high spatiotemporal resolution— I also identify distinct cortex-wide spatiotemporal motifs of cerebral theta oscillations prominent during natural behavior. These novel findings open up new avenues of investigation for understanding how the brain integrates information into the production of ongoing behavior in natural conditions.
This dissertation includes previously published and unpublished co-authored material. This dissertation also includes seven supplementary videos related to the material described in Chapter II.