Chronic
Established in 2018, the Chronic Animal Facility is dedicated to long-term in vivo experiments in rodents, providing researchers with advanced technologies to investigate brain function, plasticity, and behavior over extended periods. The facility supports longitudinal studies combining chronic imaging, electrophysiology, and behavioral analyses ranging from highly controlled tasks to naturalistic, ethologically relevant paradigms, enabling the investigation of neural circuits from single neurons to large-scale cortical networks.
Our expertise
The facility provides expertise in the development and implementation of chronic experimental preparations, including:
- Longitudinal optical imaging, including chronic two-photon microscopy for repeated imaging of identified cells and neuronal populations across days to months.
- Widefield cortical imaging, including intrinsic optical signal imaging and widefield calcium imaging, enabling functional mapping and monitoring of activity across large cortical networks.
- Electrophysiology, including in vivo patch-clamp recordings, and long-term extracellular recordings in awake behaving animals (silicon probe and Neuropixels recordings)
- Optical manipulation of neural circuits, including optogenetic stimulation and inhibition, combined with imaging, electrophysiology, and behavioral assays.
- Fiber photometry, enabling chronic recordings of genetically encoded fluorescent indicators from deep or distributed brain structures in freely moving animals.
- Miniaturized 1P and 2P microscopy (miniscopes) for longitudinal calcium imaging in freely behaving animals.
- Chemogenetic approaches for long-term modulation of neuronal activity in chronic behavioral studies.
- Behavioral neuroscience, combining operant conditioning, virtual reality, and naturalistic (ethological) behavioral paradigms to investigate learning, memory, perception, decision-making, social interactions, exploration, and other spontaneous behaviors in both controlled and ecologically relevant environments.
- Virtual reality systems, providing immersive and highly controlled sensory environments for head-fixed behavioral experiments.
- Chronic surgical preparations, including cranial windows, head-fixation implants, and long-term recording interfaces.
Animal Housing and Welfare
Animals involved in chronic protocols are housed in individually ventilated cages with ad libitum access to food and water. Their health and well-being are monitored daily by a dedicated animal care technician (zootechnician), ensuring the highest standards of animal welfare and compliance with national and European ethical regulations.
Who we are
The facility managers are Aurélie Saint-Amaux, research engineer & Frédéric Gambino, research director
Contact: chronic.managers@diff.u-bordeaux.fr