Author Correction: Zebrafish and medaka offer insights into the neurobehavioral correlates of vertebrate magnetoreception.

Text for Correction.

Zebrafish and medaka offer insights into the neurobehavioral correlates of vertebrate magnetoreception.

An impediment to a mechanistic understanding of how some species sense the geomagnetic field ("magnetoreception") is the lack of vertebrate genetic models that exhibit well-characterized magnetoreceptive behavior and are amenable to whole-brain analysis. We investigated the genetic model organisms zebrafish and medaka, whose young stages are transparent and optically accessible. In an unfamiliar environment, adult fish orient according to the directional change of a magnetic field even in darkness. To enable experiments also in juveniles, we applied slowly oscillating magnetic fields, aimed at generating conflicting sensory inputs during exploratory behavior. Medaka (but not zebrafish) increase their locomotor activity in this assay. Complementary brain  activity mapping reveals neuronal activation in the lateral hindbrain during magnetic stimulation. These comparative data support magnetoreception in teleosts, provide evidence for a light-independent mechanism, and demonstrate the usefulness of zebrafish and medaka as genetic vertebrate models for studying the biophysical and neuronal mechanisms underlying magnetoreception.

NeuBtracker-imaging neurobehavioral dynamics in freely behaving fish.

A long-standing objective in neuroscience has been to image distributed neuronal activity in freely behaving animals. Here we introduce NeuBtracker, a tracking microscope for simultaneous imaging of neuronal activity and behavior of freely swimming fluorescent reporter fish. We showcase the value of NeuBtracker for screening neurostimulants with respect to their combined neuronal and behavioral effects and for determining spontaneous and stimulus-induced spatiotemporal patterns of neuronal activation during naturalistic behavior.

Microfluidic sorting of intrinsically magnetic cells under visual control.

Magnetic cell sorting provides a valuable complementary mechanism to fluorescent techniques, especially if its parameters can be fine-tuned. In addition, there has recently been growing interest in studying naturally occurring magnetic cells and genetic engineering of cells to render them magnetic in order to control molecular processes via magnetic fields. For such approaches, contamination-free magnetic separation is an essential capability. We here present a robust and tunable microfluidic sorting system in which magnetic gradients of up to 1700 T/m can be applied to cells flowing through a sorting channel by reversible magnetization of ferrofluids. Visual control of the sorting process allowed us to optimize sorting efficiencies for a large range of sizes and magnetic moments of cells. Using automated quantification based on imaging of fluorescent markers, we showed that macrophages containing phagocytosed magnetic nanoparticles, with cellular magnetic dipole moments on the order of 10 fAm2, could be sorted with an efficiency of 90 ± 1%. Furthermore, we successfully sorted intrinsically magnetic magnetotactic bacteria with magnetic moments of 0.1 fAm2. In distinction to column-based magnetic sorting devices, microfluidic systems can prevent sample contact with superparamagnetic material. This ensures contamination-free separation of naturally occurring or bioengineered magnetic cells and is essential for downstream characterization of their properties.

Calcium neuroimaging in behaving zebrafish larvae using a turn-key light field camera.

Reconstructing a three-dimensional scene from multiple simultaneously acquired perspectives (the light field) is an elegant scanless imaging concept that can exceed the temporal resolution of currently available scanning-based imaging methods for capturing fast cellular processes. We tested the performance of commercially available light field cameras on a fluorescent microscopy setup for monitoring calcium activity in the brain of awake and behaving reporter zebrafish larvae. The plenoptic imaging system could volumetrically resolve diverse neuronal response profiles throughout the zebrafish brain upon stimulation with an aversive odorant. Behavioral responses of the reporter fish could be captured simultaneously together with depth-resolved neuronal activity. Overall, our assessment showed that with some optimizations for fluorescence microscopy applications, commercial light field cameras have the potential of becoming an attractive alternative to custom-built systems to accelerate molecular imaging research on cellular dynamics.