NINDS 23-010735

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) Spinal Circuits and Plasticity Unit relies heavily on high-speed recordings for analysis of behavior to better understand the function of how neural circuits encode specific behaviors of intact and injured spinal cords. There is a particular focus recently on how molecular identification of spinal cord neurons can be optogenitically modulated to produce specific motor programs, which leads to well defined behavior outputs in animal. In particular, the behavior requires high-speed recordings at high resolutions because spinally driven behaviors are as fast as 10 milliseconds, which is not detectable by the human eye. The acquisition will add an additional high-speed camera unit to an existing high-speed camera in the laboratory with the goal of recording behaviors in 3D and at longer durations (up to 4 hours). Until now, a single high-speed camera has fulfilled the basic demands of recording behavior in 2D. However, animals move in 3D and the 2D analysis of behavior is not sufficient to determine fine motor movements of behavior that is functionally relevant to specific neural circuit characterization. A cost-effective option to record and recreate 3D projections of behaviors is another high-speed camera of equal specifications that can be synchronized with the existing high-speed camera system without additional hardware or software upgrades. Such a system allows for synchronized high-speed video recordings in parallel with recording electrical activities from spinal neurons. The need exists to acquire a high-speed camera with 1) high resolution and high-speed video recording from 1,000 – 5,000 frames per second; 2) direct synchronization capabilities with existing high-speed camera system; 3) and software and hardware integration allowing for direct camera control, live viewing, and tech support.