Head-mounted Photoacoustic Imaging of Deep-brain Neural Activities in Freely Behaving Animals

Abstract To capture the normal brain functions, it is critically important to record the neural activities in freely-behaving animals, with high resolution, high speed, and high throughput. So far, our knowledge about neuronal activity of awake animals mainly relies on electrode recording, which, however, is invasive. Optical imaging techniques have been widely used to visualize activity of a large number of neurons in mouse models using fluorescent membrane voltage or calcium indicators. However, limited by the penetration depth (