Dear all,
our lab routinely performs in vivo electrophysiology in awake behaving head-fixed mice using silicon multichannel micro electrode arrays. My question concerns ways to choose a coordinate framework which would allow us to achieve multiple goals:
I am currently favouring using the skull-flat stereotaxic configuration which aligns the bregma-lambda plane horizontally. First, it seems quick and easy to obtain during surgery, and during histology, where one simply has to lay the brain on its dorsal surface to obtain coronal sections. Second, it seems to be a standard used by a large part of the research community, notably histological atlases incl. Franklin & Paxinos and the Allen Mouse Brain atlas.
However, it seems that the skull-flat configuration might be problematic during awake recordings, as the 'natural' bregma-lambda plane axis tilt in mice seems to be 30º downwards pitch (see reference link). Of course, one way around would be to use this pitch tilt for the mouse head and correspondingly tilt the micro manipulator controlling the electrode. But achieving this perfect pitch axis tilt is not possible as the electrode tower often needs to be rotated (yaw axis) at an angle towards the mouse in order not to block the visual field. And simply ignoring the issue of achieving a standardised coordinate framework fails goals 2 and 3.
I would be pleased to hear your suggestions!
Many thanks,
Yannik
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2278379/
Dear colleague, I think that we may use old stereotaxic atlases as inspiration. For example, the Pellegrino & Cushing 1979 atlas (for rats) uses a circa 27º downward inclination. Although I don't know any atlas that uses an inclinated reference plan for mice, you can create your own solution starting from the FSP-referenced coordinates provided by Paxinos & Franklin atlas and transpose those coordinates through axis rotation by means of analytical geometry. Let us know when you do it. I hope I helped you. Best regards.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Histology