A fundamental challenge to understanding the brain is its complexity: its genetic and developmental programs, its neurons and connections, its balance of permanence and plasticity, and the nuanced information flow through its networks. Across biology, emerging technologies are revolutionising the scope and scale at which we can address such questions. Our group has developed technologies for studying brain-wide sensory networks using calcium imaging and house-built light-sheet microscopes. Because zebrafish larvae are small and transparent, we can image tens of thousands of neurons, simultaneously and individually, as animals perceive and respond to sensory stimuli. We have used this approach to produce the first functional maps, brain-wide at cellular resolution, for auditory, vestibular, and water flow perception in a vertebrate. Our lab and others have also used such baseline descriptions as a departure point for exploring altered sensory networks in zebrafish models of neuropsychiatric conditions such as autism.
These imaging studies have taught us where and when neurons are active, but not how or why. In this talk, I will review our calcium imaging approaches and results, and will then discuss how other technologies, such as X-ray diffraction, electron microscopy, and spatial transcriptomics can provide complementary information about the structure and function of brain-wide networks. I will present preliminary data using these platforms and discuss the enormous potential that such combined approaches hold, but also the technical challenges that merging these big-data modalities presents.