Werner Craig T, Williams Christopher J, Fermelia Mercedes R, Lin Da-Ting, Li Yun
Intramural Research Program, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, Baltimore, MD, United States.
Department of Zoology and Physiology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, United States.
Front Neurosci. 2019 Oct 31;13:1174. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2019.01174. eCollection 2019.
Neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs), such as Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD), Huntington's disease (HD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and frontotemporal dementia (FTD), are devastating age-associated brain disorders. Significant efforts have been made to uncover the molecular and cellular pathogenic mechanisms that underlie NDDs. However, our understanding of the neural circuit mechanisms that mediate NDDs and associated symptomatic features have been hindered by technological limitations. Our inability to identify and track individual neurons longitudinally in subcortical brain regions that are preferentially targeted in NDDs has left gaping holes in our knowledge of NDDs. Recent development and advancement of the miniature fluorescence microscope (miniscope) has opened up new avenues for examining spatially and temporally coordinated activity from hundreds of cells in deep brain structures in freely moving rodents. In the present mini-review, we examine the capabilities of current and future miniscope tools and discuss the innovative applications of miniscope imaging techniques that can push the boundaries of our understanding of neural circuit mechanisms of NDDs into new territories.
神经退行性疾病（NDDs），如阿尔茨海默病（AD）、帕金森病（PD）、亨廷顿舞蹈病（HD）、肌萎缩侧索硬化症（ALS）和额颞叶痴呆（FTD），是与年龄相关的毁灭性脑部疾病。人们已经做出了巨大努力来揭示NDDs潜在的分子和细胞致病机制。然而，技术限制阻碍了我们对介导NDDs及相关症状特征的神经回路机制的理解。我们无法在NDDs中优先靶向的皮质下脑区纵向识别和追踪单个神经元，这使得我们对NDDs的认识存在巨大空白。微型荧光显微镜（miniscope）的最新发展和进步为研究自由活动啮齿动物深部脑结构中数百个细胞的时空协调活动开辟了新途径。在本微型综述中，我们研究了当前和未来miniscope工具的能力，并讨论了miniscope成像技术的创新应用，这些应用可以将我们对NDDs神经回路机制的理解边界拓展到新领域。
