Identify activated neurons and brain regions

Use Case: Identify activated and inhibited brain regions

Map whole brain activity: Immunolabeling for cFos and ΔFosB, imaging at single-cell resolution imaging, and registering automatically to custom brain atlases can reveal regions of brain activity without any a priori knowledge.
Make neural activity comparisons brain-wide: Discover shared and distinct brain activity patterns and neural ensembles across various contexts such as genetic mutations, drug treatments, sexual dimorphisms, homeostatic mechanisms, and more. 
Correlate neural activity with gene expression: Align cFos maps to gene expression maps to identify candidate genes that alter neural activity in distinct brain regions.

c-FOS labeling (green) and detected c-FOS+ cells (red) in mouse brain, imaged with SmartSPIM at 3.6x.

c-FOS expression in whole rat brain, imaged with SmartSPIM

c-FOS in whole rat brain, imaged with SmartSPIM at 3.6X

(Ref 2) Figure 1h – 1i: (h) Schematics of whole-brain clearing and volumetric three-dimensional imaging used to identify brain regions activated during cold-induced energy compensations. (i) c-Fos mapping results for the thalamus. Each dot represents c-Fos+ cell count in each distinct region and dot size represents the difference in signal density between the two conditions. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

For additional publications supporting this use case refer to:

  1. Yao et al. (2022) Neuron, 110:23, 3986 – 3999.e6 – See Figure 1a-1e, Supplementary Figure 1
  2. Lal et al. Nature 621, 138–145 (2023) – See Figure 1h-1i
  3. Davoudian et al. (2023) ACS Chemical Neuroscience – See Figure 1-4, Supplementary Figures 1-5
  4. Tan et al. Science 384:6693 (2024) – See Figures 1b-1f, 5a-5d
  5. Yang et al. Neuron 112, 959–971 (2024) – See Figure 5d
  6. Wasilczuk et al. (2024) Proceedings National Academy Sciences, 121(3):e2312913120 (2024) – See Figure 4a-4c
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