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A valuable and promising method for recording brain activity in behaving newborn rodents
Journal article   Peer reviewed

A valuable and promising method for recording brain activity in behaving newborn rodents

Mark S Blumberg, Greta Sokoloff, Alexandre Tiriac and Carlos Del Rio‐Bermudez
Developmental psychobiology, Vol.57(4), pp.506-517
05/2015
DOI: 10.1002/dev.21305
PMCID: PMC4605431
PMID: 25864710

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Abstract

ABSTRACT Neurophysiological recording of brain activity has been critically important to the field of neuroscience, but has contributed little to the field of developmental psychobiology. The reasons for this can be traced largely to methodological difficulties associated with recording neural activity in behaving newborn rats and mice. Over the last decade, however, the evolution of methods for recording from head‐fixed newborns has heralded a new era in developmental neurophysiology. Here, we review these recent developments and provide a step‐by‐step primer for those interested in applying the head‐fix method to their own research questions. Until now, this method has been used primarily to investigate spontaneous brain activity across sleep and wakefulness, the contributions of the sensory periphery to brain activity, or intrinsic network activity. Now, with some ingenuity, the uses of the head‐fix method can be expanded to other domains to benefit our understanding of brain‐behavior relations under normal and pathophysiological conditions across early development. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 57: 506–517, 2015.
 multiunit activity rat EEG plasticity infant imaging sleep mouse local field potential wake pathophysiology spontaneous activity neurophysiology

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