Tagging, recording and replaying neural activity

An interdisciplinary team of scientists has created a new molecular tool to help us better understand the cellular basis of behavior. A new molecular probe from Stanford University could help reveal how our brains think and remember. This tool, called Fast Light and Calcium-Regulated Expression or FLiCRE (pronounced "flicker"), can be sent inside any cell to perform a variety of research tasks, including tagging, recording and controlling cellular functions. "This work gets at a central goal of neuroscience: How do you find the system of neurons that underlie a thought or cognitive process? Neuroscientists have been wanting this type of tool for a long time," said Alice Ting , professor of genetics in the Stanford School of Medicine and of biology in the School of Humanities and sciences , whose team co-led this work with the lab of Stanford psychiatrist and bioengineer, Karl Deisseroth. In proof-of-concept experiments, detailed in a paper published Dec. 11 in Cell , the researchers used FLiCRE to take a snapshot of neural activity associated with avoidance behavior in mice. By coupling the FLiCRE snapshot with RNA sequencing, they discovered that these activated neurons primarily belonged to a single cell type, which was inaccessible using genetic tools alone.