It’s just not about human brain these days but the Stanford University researchers have unveiled a microscope weighing just 1.1 grams that is designed to be mounted to a mouse’s head and record the animal behavior by not hampering the movement of the rat. The device also helps in studying human diseases and uses transgenic mice. Now if one looks into the working of the microscope it’s mounted to the head of a mouse under anesthetic, and a marker dye is injected into the brain to label blood plasma, but leaving blood cells unaffected. This device has already been used to study the circulation of blood through the one-cell-wide capillaries in the brain of a mouse.

The researcher Schnitzel says the device uses light given by a mercury arc lamp by a bundle of optical fibers, causing the dyed blood plasma to fluoresce, showing only individual blood cells as dark spots. The image goes back up to the fiber-optic bundle where in a camera records the image. Over a 100 images are recorded every second, making researchers to watch high-speed video of individual blood cells flowing in the brain. Movement of cells can be viewed when the mouse wakes up from the anesthetic.

Carl Petersen feels though that this device cannot record all kinds of brain activity but Schnitzel disagrees and comments that the microscope detects changes in fluorescence as small as 0.5% and not just the high contrast structures.

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Via: EntertainmentAndShowbiz