Multifunctional fibers for simultaneous optical, electrical and chemical interrogation of neural circuits in vivo

• Published in: Nature biotechnology Vol. 33; no. 3; pp. 277 - 284
• Main Authors: Canales, Andres, Jia, Xiaoting, Froriep, Ulrich P, Koppes, Ryan A, Tringides, Christina M, Selvidge, Jennifer, Lu, Chi, Hou, Chong, Wei, Lei, Fink, Yoel, Anikeeva, Polina
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Nature Publishing Group US 01-03-2015; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 13; 13/51; 13/62; 59; 631/61/54/993; 639/301/54/993; 639/624/399/1028; 64; 64/60; 9/30; Agriculture; Animals; Bioinformatics; Biomedical Engineering/Biotechnology; Biomedicine; Biotechnology; Blood-Brain Barrier - drug effects; Cellular signal transduction; Composite materials; Drug Delivery Systems; Electrodes; Electrophysiological Phenomena - drug effects; Foreign-Body Reaction - pathology; Implants, Experimental; Life Sciences; Male; Medical equipment; Metals - pharmacology; Mice, Inbred C57BL; Mice, Transgenic; Nerve Net - drug effects; Nerve Net - physiology; Neural circuitry; Neurological research; Optical Fibers; Optogenetics; Polymers; Probes; Spectrum analysis; Tissue analysis; United States > US; Massachusetts
• ISSN: 1087-0156; 1546-1696
• DOI: 10.1038/nbt.3093

Highly flexible fibers enable simultaneous electrical neural recording, optical stimulation and drug delivery in freely moving mice.
Brain function depends on simultaneous electrical, chemical and mechanical signaling at the cellular level. This multiplicity has confounded efforts to simultaneously measure or modulate these diverse signals
in vivo
. Here we present fiber probes that allow for simultaneous optical stimulation, neural recording and drug delivery in behaving mice with high resolution. These fibers are fabricated from polymers by means of a thermal drawing process that allows for the integration of multiple materials and interrogation modalities into neural probes. Mechanical, electrical, optical and microfluidic measurements revealed high flexibility and functionality of the probes under bending deformation. Long-term
in vivo
recordings, optogenetic stimulation, drug perturbation and analysis of tissue response confirmed that our probes can form stable brain-machine interfaces for at least 2 months. We expect that our multifunctional fibers will permit more detailed manipulation and analysis of neural circuits deep in the brain of behaving animals than achievable before.