Tracking neural activity from the same cells during the entire adult life of mice

Abstract

Stably recording the electrical activity of the same neurons over the adult life of an animal is important to neuroscience research and biomedical applications. Current implantable devices cannot provide stable recording on this timescale. Here, we introduce a method to precisely implant electronics with an open, unfolded mesh structure across multiple brain regions in the mouse. The open mesh structure forms a stable interwoven structure with the neural network, preventing probe drifting and showing no immune response and neuron loss during the year-long implantation. Rigorous statistical analysis, visual stimulus-dependent measurement and unbiased, machine-learning-based analysis demonstrated that single-unit action potentials have been recorded from the same neurons of behaving mice in a very long-term stable manner. Leveraging this stable structure, we demonstrated that the same neurons can be recorded over the entire adult life of the mouse, revealing the aging-associated evolution of single-neuron activities.