In this episode, we welcome Dr. Kannan and his team, pioneers in neuroscience and the developers of Genetically Encoded Fluorescent Voltage Indicators (GEVIs). They share the intricate dynamics of signal processing in the brain, involving various excitatory and inhibitory neuron populations.

Dr. Kannan's team discusses their innovations, including the second-generation GEVIs Ace-mNeon2 and VARNAM2. These have shown significantly improved voltage sensitivities and, along with their respective reverse response-polarity variants, provide an unparalleled suite of tools for multi-population voltage recordings in awake, behaving animals.

The team also talks about their experiments involving these indicators, which allowed low-power recordings from a vast number of individual neurons in running mice. These investigations have unveiled fascinating insights into visual cortical cell type-specific responses to behavioral-state transitions. Their work has particularly highlighted the profound activation of cortical interneurons expressing somatostatin (SST) during a quiescence-to-arousal transition.

Dr. Kannan and his team have explored the functional dynamics of pairs of neuron types and the contributions of distinct cell classes to the local field potential in the hippocampus. They discovered differences in the responses of neuron subclasses to state changes and even extracted the simultaneous real-time voltage dynamics of three neuron types.

Join us in this episode as we delve into the insights gathered from the concerted dynamics of multiple cell classes in behaving animals. We also explore this technology's tremendous potential for furthering our understanding of brain function.

Key Words: Neuroscience, Genetically Encoded Fluorescent Voltage Indicators, Brain Function, Neuron Populations, Ace-mNeon2, VARNAM2, Visual Cortical Cell, Local Field Potential.

Dual-polarity voltage imaging of the concurrent dynamics of multiple neuron types https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abm8797