Neural probe system for behavioral neuropharmacology by bi-directional wireless drug delivery and electrophysiology in socially interacting mice

Abstract

Assessing the neurological and behavioral effects of drugs is important in developing pharmacological treatments, as well as understanding the mechanisms associated with neurological disorders. Herein, we present a miniaturized, wireless neural probe system with the capability of delivering drugs for the real-time investigation of the effects of the drugs on both behavioral and neural activities in socially interacting mice. We demonstrate wireless drug delivery and simultaneous monitoring of the resulting neural, behavioral changes, as well as the dose-dependent and repeatable responses to drugs. Furthermore, in pairs of mice, we use a food competition assay in which social interaction was modulated by the delivery of the drug, and the resulting changes in their neural activities are analyzed. During modulated food competition by drug injection, we observe changes in neural activity in mPFC region of a participating mouse over time. Our system may provide new opportunities for the development of studying the effects of drugs on behaviour and neural activity.

T-DOpE probes reveal sensitivity of hippocampal oscillations to cannabinoids in behaving mice

“…There is a general problem in drug infusion into the brain in that tissue is displaced, which is especially noticeable when combined with single unit electrophysiology. To validate that the transient silencing of cells is a result of the physical cell displacement 72 , 78 , 79 instead of pharmacological influence, we performed a detailed comparison of the dynamic spike recording during the infusion of saline, vehicle, and drug+vehicle. We observed transient absences of spikes after infusion of either saline, vehicle, or drug+vehicle (Fig.…”

An integrated microfluidic and fluorescence platform for probing in vivo neuropharmacology

“…While the photo-fluidic device has many noted advantages, several key limitations exist. First, device operation was limited to acute (≤ 1 day after device implantation) intracranial infusion due to clogging of the fluidic channels that occurred after one day of implantation, a known difficulty of biological implantation and challenging hurdle to overcome (Wu et al 2022, Yoon et al 2022). Despite this limitation, we believe our demonstrations barely scratch the surface of the information that could be gained even with relatively acute infusion time-points and these data can be used to inform subsequent in vivo experimentation (Fig.…”

Nanocarrier‐Based Drug Delivery Systems using Microfluidic‐Assisted Techniques

“…[ 103 ] A miniaturized bidirectionally communicative wireless neural probe has been demonstrated for dose‐controlled drug delivery, and the drug release profile was monitored in real time. [ 104 ] An in vivo programmable wireless delivery device comprising an array of cellular‐scale inorganic light‐emitting diodes (μ‐ILED) with microfluidics has been developed to investigate the neuronal activity of freely behaving animals. They used optofluidic neural probes for investigating neurons’ activity under drug exposure.…”