Cortex-wide imaging in naturally behaving mice with 1-gram wireless mesoscopes

Key Points:

• Researchers have developed Airscope, a wireless mesoscope weighing 1 gram that provides 4 μm lateral resolution across a 6 mm field of view at 12.5 Hz, enabling cellular-resolution cortical imaging in freely moving animals.
• Airscope's aspheric-lens design reduces the total track length by 2.84 times compared to previous miniaturized microscopes, while supporting calcium imaging from over 8,500 neurons per animal, a 25-fold increase in neuron yield.
• The device supports cable-free imaging in diverse behavioral conditions, including room-scale arenas, swimming assays, and multi-organ implantation, and allows simultaneous recording from multiple animals.
• Using Airscope, researchers identified cortical activity patterns linked to social dominance, decoded competition outcomes across paired animals, observed reward-location-related activity during maze exploration, and characterized spinal cord to cortex influence during fear conditioning.
• Airscope advances systems neuroscience by combining large-scale, high-resolution brain recording with naturalistic, untethered behavior, making multi-animal cortical imaging more practical and accessible.