Profiling Maternal Behavior Responses During Whole-Brain Imaging.

Abstract

Recent advancements in whole-brain imaging tools have enabled neuroscientists to investigate how coordinated brain activity processes external cues, influencing internal state changes and eliciting behavioral responses. For example, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a noninvasive technique that allows for the measurement of whole-brain activity in awake, behaving mice using the blood oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) response. However, to fully understand BOLD responses evoked by external stimuli, it is crucial that experimenters also assess behavioral responses during scans. The MRI environment poses challenges to this goal, rendering commonly employed methods of behavioral monitoring incompatible. These challenges include (1) a restricted field of view and (2) the limited availability of equipment without ferromagnetic components. Presented here is a behavioral video analysis pipeline that overcomes these limitations by extracting valuable information from videos acquired within these environmental constraints, enabling the evaluation of behavior during the acquisition of whole-brain neural data. Employing methods such as optical flow estimation and dimensionality reduction, robust differences can be detected in behavioral responses to stimuli presented during fMRI scans. For example, representative results suggest that mouse pup vocalizations, but not pure tones, evoke significantly different behavioral responses in maternal versus virgin female mice. Moving forward, this behavioral analysis pipeline, initially tailored to overcome challenges in fMRI experiments, can be extended to various neural recording methods, providing versatile behavioral monitoring in constrained environments. The coordinated evaluation of behavioral and neural responses will offer a more comprehensive understanding of how the perception of stimuli leads to the coordination of complex behavioral outputs.