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  • TECHNOLOGY FEATURE

Thumb-sized microscope captures images deep inside the brains of active animals

After years of development, researchers have managed to shrink two-photon microscopy into a device that can be mounted on rodents’ heads without impeding behaviour.
  1. Esther Landhuis

    1. Esther Landhuis is a science journalist in the San Francisco Bay Area, California.

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Close up of the MINI2P device being held between a thumb and forefinger

The Mini2P is a two-photon microscope that is so small and light it can be mounted on the head of an animal. Credit: Weijian Zong/Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience

As Weijian Zong stared at a dazzling grid of green and blue brain cells under the microscope he had built, he felt — for a moment — unstoppable. “I felt that if we could make [this microscope] work, we can do anything we want,” he says. The moment, last March, called for an impromptu laboratory meeting, and a celebration. Zong, an optical engineer at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience in Trondheim, Norway, changed into a white shirt and tie before showing his latest data to his co-workers. It was, he says, the moment his “toy became a tool”.

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Nature 610, 809-811 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03395-z

References

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