Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

Electrophysiology is a technique used to study physiology of living cells and tissues by measuring their electrical properties, such as voltage change and current flow. This is of particular importance in neuroscience, wherein action potentials may be recorded directly from neurons in-vivo. Extracellular glass capillary electrodes are produced by heating glass capillaries using an electrode puller, which provides force to pull glass apart and produce small tips with high resistance. Extracellular recording places the tip of the electrode near the neuronal surface, or over the surface of an insect sensillum, recording ion potential changes in the cell vicinity. For insect sensillar recording, positioning of an electrode over an individual sensillum requires the use of micromanipulators and a high-magnification microscope to visualize individual sensillae. After recording, neurons are stained to determine connections and targets throughout the brain. Brains stained in this way can be fixed, embedded, sectioned and observed on slides under the same microscope. In this way, the requested microscope is multifunctional: it provides a means for both engaging in direct electrophysiological recording and a necessary means for observing and recording neuroanatomy from stained preparations. Insights provided through this study will be beneficial to medical, agricultural, basic neuroscience and artificial intelligence research throughout Canada and the world.