HKT has successfully developed a high-speed microscope to provide research clues for brain diseases

University of Hong Kong announced on the 9th that its research team has successfully developed an ultra-high-speed microscope that can effectively capture brain-wave signals and provide clues to research into brain diseases such as brain degeneration.A "double photon fluorescence microscope" developed by HKU in cooperation with a team at the University of California, Berkeley, captures electron signals and chemical transfer between neurons. In the experiment, the team successfully recorded electrical impulses generated by neurons in the brains of a live mouse that flashed in milliseconds.The microscope uses ultra-high-speed laser scanning technology developed by the HKC team to generate a row of laser pulses in a pair of parallel mirrors at a speed of at least 1,000 times faster than current laser scanning technology. In the experiment, the researchers used a high-speed microscope to project a scanning laser on a mouse's brain, imaging the mouse's cerebral cortical cortical system 1,000 to 3,000 times per second in two-dimensional scans.Xie Jianwen, associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and director of the Biomedical Engineering Program, who led the research team, said there are different types of technology that can capture brain-wave signals, including implanting electrodes into the brain to measure brain voltage directly, but with highly traumatic effects, while magnetic resonance and traditional optical microscopes are slower. The advantage of HKC's new technology is that it is less traumatic and can pinpoint individual neurons and track their path of excitation in milliseconds.Xie said the new technology could detect changes in the activity of a single neuron in the living brain in milliseconds. The team hopes to further improve technology over the next year and explore deeper brain structures and better understand brain function.The findings have been published in the academic journal Nature Methods. (Xinhua)