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Primary Contract Specialist
Secondary Contracting Officer
San Jose, California
95135-1069, United States
In addition, HJ Optronics is the only company that offers customization to our needs, which includes individual cooling systems, huge variety of wavelengths, and their lasers are among the most powerful lasers found in the optogenetics market. Additionally, they offer the possibility to have multiple laser wavelengths within one single unit, which is a plus compared to other companies, where items need to be purchased individually.
The Neurophysiology Imaging Facility (NIF) core facility was established to promote the development of new techniques and applications in brain imaging of non-human primates. As part of its service to the NIH community, the NIF must provide specialized equipment and software for shared use to a broad spectrum of researchers from varied Neuroscience fields within the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the National Eye Institute (NEI), and the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).
Cognitive function emerges in distributed neural networks through local and inter-areal neuronal interactions, constituting a complex interaction network. A full account of this interaction among networks is fundamental for our understanding about brain function and dynamics. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been the method of choice to non-invasive mapping of functional connectivity (FC) by the degree of synchrony between fMRI time series among anatomically distinct brain regions. Therefore, to better understand FC at the circuit level, we need to be able to understand the causal influence of one brain region on another. Optogenetics is a method that offers the means of using light to control activity of genetically specified neurons.
The use of optogenetics with fMRI (opto-fMRI) provide a powerful tool enabling brain-wide mapping of functional networks in both healthy and disease model subjects. Currently, the NIF houses a 7T MRI scanner suitable to functionally map networks across the whole brain of small animals at a very high spatial resolution. However, there is not a powerful laser that could be used to achieve the goal of mapping functional connections.
The laser we seek to purchase will allow us to modulate neural activity in well-defined regions and combined with fMRI, will provide with a robust high-throughput capability for obtaining and constructing, multisite functional connectivity across the brain of mammals. This opens new opportunities for investigating dynamic brain state-dependent (e.g., plasticity, disease progression and therapeutic interventions) circuit dissection or biomarker screening in whole-brain functional networks. Our opto-fMRI setup could be used on cortical resting-state functional parcellation in an individual subject to obtain the functional modules in the whole brain. At the same time, cortical grid stimulation may be sequentially used to map functional parcellations. Two types of stimulation can be used, excitation or inhibition. In particular optogenetic silencing works by activating inhibitory neurons, suppressing the spontaneous neural activity of the stimulated site and its downstream circuits. This will allow us to map resting state functional circuits. When the optogenetic silencing of several targets is combined with sensory or excitatory optogenetic stimuli, causal functional networks can be effectively dissected.
Background Information and Objective: As part of its service to the NIH community, the NIF must provide specialized equipment for shared use to a broad spectrum of researchers with various levels of expertise from Neuroscience fields.
This laser is of high importance in our research as it will enable us to stimulate multiple sites across the brain of mammals and to test the causal link across multiple brain networks. Similarly, our approach can be readily adopted in a variety of fMRI studies that require (1) sequential cell-type-specific stimulation on multiple sites for mapping functional cortico-cortical or subcortical networks, (2) temporally controlled stimulation on multiple sites for investigating interregional functional coupling balances, (3) an in situ subject-specific stimulation design defined by anatomical or functional imaging, and (4) simultaneous functional mapping of cortical areas through optical imaging and cortical-subcortical regions by fMRI.
The purchase of the laser not only benefits fMRI projects, but it also provides the means for optogenetic manipulation in combination with other methods allowing whole-brain dynamics. For instance, combining optogenetics with EEG/ECoG in which causally stimulating a defined cortical circuit will offer an opportunity to arrive at a hierarchical model of brain hierarchical communication.
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