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Abstract:
Fundamental understanding of higher cognitive functions can greatly benefit from imaging of cortical activity with high spatiotemporal resolution in the behaving non-human primate.To achieve rapid imaging of high-resolution dynamicsof cortical representations of spontaneous and evoked activity ,we designed a novel data acquisition protocol for sensory stimulation by rapidly interleaving multiple stimuli in continuous sessions of optical imaging with voltage-sensitive dyes. We also tested a new algorithm for the “temporally structured componentanalysis” (TSCA) of a multidimensional timeseries that was developed for our new data acquisitionprotocol, but was tested only on simulated data (Blumenfeld, 2010). In addition to the raw data, the algorithm incorporates prior knowledge about the temporal structure of the data as well as input from other information. Here we showed thatTSCA can successfully separate functional signal components from other signals referred to as noise. Imaging of responses to multiple visual stimuli, utilizing voltage-sensitive dyes, wasperformed on the visual cortex of awake monkeys. Multiple cortical representations,including orientation and ocular dominance maps as well as thehitherto elusive retinotopic representation of orientation stimuli, were extracted in only 10 secondsof imaging, approximately two orders of magnitude faster than accomplished by conventional methods. Since the approach is rather general, other imaging techniques may also benefit from the same stimulation protocol. This methodology can thus facilitate rapid optical imaging explorations in monkeys, rodents and other specieswith a versatility and speed that were not feasible before.
