Psychiatric disorders give rise to aberrant patterns of activity within the complex neural circuits of our brains. Yet, the exact nature of these abnormal patterns is often unknown to developers of new treatments. The goal of this project is to enable circuit-oriented research of neuropsychiatric diseases using rodent disease models. The long-term objective is to catalyze the discovery of new therapeutic targets for a variety of disorders and to provide a tool to study animal-to-animal variability in neural coding. A new type of research tool will be developed and commercialized that is specialized for high-throughput, detailed, and long-term neural measurements in behaving mice. Phase I enabled the development of a data logging system prototype that is lightweight enough for a freely-moving mouse to carry as well as flexible electrode technology that is minimally invasive to brain tissue. Throughout this next Phase-- in partnership with UT Austin--a miniaturized data logging system will be further developed to optimize weight, size, cost, and capabilities. Various probe parameters will be tested in vivo to create target-optimized recordings for multiple brain regions. Final, user-customization will be enabled through a web-based system configuration interface. By enabling high-throughput and long-term recordings, this tool provides a practical way to study the progression of circuit dysfunction using large cohorts of animal disease models.
This project aims to catalyze the discovery of new treatments for psychiatric disorders by enabling researchers to study such diseases on the level of neural spiking activity in complex interconnected circuits. A research tool will be commercialized that addresses two major needs involving chronic in vivo electrophysiology in rodent models of disease: 1) long term recording stability to track disease progression, and 2) practical system scalability for high-throughput research using large animal cohorts.
