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[Preprint]. 2023 Aug 21:2023.08.02.551691.
doi: 10.1101/2023.08.02.551691.

An Integrated Platform for in vivo Electrophysiology in Spatial Cognition Experiments

A Brea Guerrero  1   2 , M Oijala  3 , S C Moseley  2 , T Tang  2 , F Fletcher  2 , Y Zheng  1   2 , L M Sanchez  4 , B J Clark  4 , B L McNaughton  3   5 , A A Wilber  1   2
Affiliations

An Integrated Platform for in vivo Electrophysiology in Spatial Cognition Experiments

A Brea Guerrero et al. bioRxiv. .

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Abstract

Spatial cognition research requires behavioral paradigms that can distinguish between different navigational elements, such as allocentric (map-like) navigation and egocentric (e.g., body centered) navigation. To fill this need, we developed a flexible experimental platform that can be quickly modified without the need for significant changes to software and hardware. In this paper, we present this inexpensive and flexible behavioral platform paired with software which we are making freely available. Our behavioral platform serves as the foundation for a range of experiments, and though developed for assessing spatial cognition, it also has applications in the non-spatial domain of behavioral testing. There are two components of the software platform, 'Maze' and 'Stim Trigger'. Both programs can work in conjunction with electrophysiology acquisition systems, allowing for precise time stamping of neural events with behavior. The Maze program includes functionality for automatic reward delivery based on user defined zones. 'Stim Trigger' permits control of brain stimulation via any equipment that can be paired with an Arduino board. We seek to share our software and leverage the potential by expanding functionality in the future to meet the needs of a larger community of researchers.

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Conflict of interest statement

7.Conflict of Interest Authors report no conflict of interest

Figures

Figure 1:
Figure 1:
Pinout mapping for IDC Breakout Boards in the behavioral platform connecting the electronic components to USB Access I/O modules. Each pin offers a connection to control LEDs, solenoids, or send TTL signals.
Figure 2:
Figure 2:
‘Maze’ GUI. Top left: Control of electronic hardware including reward type, stimulation parameters and valve control. Middle left and center: Set the characteristics of zones of interest, including number of zones, zone location, selection of ‘Tracked zones’ and ‘Rewarded zones’, and randomization of rewarded zones. Middle bottom: LED test and auto Calibration controls. Bottom left: Counters and Configuration controls. Top right: Animal ID and Comment boxes. Middle and bottom right: Real-time position tracking.
Figure 3:
Figure 3:
‘Stim Trigger’ software GUI. Top: Stimulus setting input boxes. Middle: “Send Manually” triggers stimulation with each mouse click, “Start Ext Trigger” turns on the automatic trigger, “Clear stim” resets the stimulation counters (right), Bottom: Radio Buttons to select the timing of the automatic trigger on the rising edge or the falling edge of the input TTL from the external triggering source.
Figure 4:
Figure 4:
Bonsai workflow for animal’s location extraction and transfer to Maze. Each graphical element represents a function within the data processing pipeline. From left to right, the live video is processed to extract and transmit the animal’s location to both Maze and a .csv file.
Figure 5:
Figure 5:
Complex Spatial Sequence Task. Schematic for the complex spatial sequence task. The rat always starts at zone 5 and continues to zone 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-5-.
Figure 6:
Figure 6:
Two plots showing the activity of two hippocampal place cells as a heat plot of time-adjusted firing rate, using an evenly spaced color-map with max rate indicated in red. The firing frequency is also shown. Only areas with a high enough occupancy during the task are represented in the figures.
Figure 7:
Figure 7:
Maze GUI for OPPA task. Top left: Control of electronic hardware including reward type: None as manual food reward is used. Middle left and center: 5 zones of interest, with allocated coordinates for zone location. Unused zones are listed above and below the zones that are positioned on the maze for visualization. Bottom left: Counters and Configuration controls. Top right: Animal ID and Comment boxes. Middle and bottom right: Real-time position tracking with zones.
Figure 8:
Figure 8:
Map-To-Action (MAT) task. Layout for the allocentric (Left) transformation (Middle) and egocentric conditions (Right) of the MAT task.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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