NeuBtracker—imaging neurobehavioral dynamics in freely behaving fish

Panagiotis Symvoulidis, Antonella Lauri, Anca Stefanoiu, Michele Cappetta, Steffen Schneider, Hongbo Jia, Anja Stelzl, Maximilian Koch, Carlos Cruz Perez, Ahne Myklatun, Sabine Renninger, Andriy Chmyrov, Tobias Lasser, Wolfgang Wurst, Vasilis Ntziachristos, Gil G Westmeyer

Abstract

A long-standing objective in neuroscience has been to image distributed neuronal activity in freely behaving animals. Here we introduce NeuBtracker, a tracking microscope for simultaneous imaging of neuronal activity and behavior of freely swimming fluorescent reporter fish. We showcase the value of NeuBtracker for screening neurostimulants with respect to their combined neuronal and behavioral effects and for determining spontaneous and stimulus-induced spatiotemporal patterns of neuronal activation during naturalistic behavior.