optoPAD and flyPAD

Carlos Ribeiro’s lab at Champalimaud recently published their new project called optoPAD in eLife:

Both the analysis of behavior and of neural activity need to be time-precise in order to make any correlation or comparison to each other. The analysis of behavior can be done through many methods (as seen by many featured projects on this site!). The Ribeiro lab has previously published their work on flyPAD (Itskov et al., 2014), which is a system for automated analysis of feeding behavior in Drosophila with high temporal precision. However, in attempts to manipulate specific feeding behaviors, the group wanted to go one step further to manipulate neural activity during feeding, and needed a method to do so that would be precise enough to compare with behavior.

In their new manuscript, Moreira et al. describe the design and implementation of a high-throughput system of closed-loop optogenetic manipulation of neurons in Drosophila during feeding behavior. Named optoPAD, the system allows for specific perturbation of specific groups of neurons. They use optoPAD as a method to induce appetitive and aversive effects on feeding through activating or inhibiting gustatory neurons in a closed-loop manner. OptoPAD is a combination of the previous flyPAD system with an additional method for stimulating LEDs for optogenetic perturbation. They also used their system combined with Bonsai, a current open-source framework for behavioral analysis.

The system first uses flyPAD to measure the interaction of the fly with the food given in an experiment. Then, Bonsai detects when the fly interacts with a food electrode, then sending a signal to a microcontroller which will turn on an LED for optogenetic perturbation of neurons in the fly. The authors additionally highlight the flexibility and expandability of the optoPAD system. They detail how flyPAD, once published and then implemented in an optogenetics framework by their group, had been successfully adapted by another group, which is a great example of the benefit of open-source sharing of projects. 

This research tool was created by your colleagues. Please acknowledge the Principal Investigator, cite the article in which the tool was described, and include an RRID in the Materials and Methods of your future publications.  optoPAD portal RRID:SCR_021453; flyPAD portal RRID:SCR_021449; flyPAD software RRID:SCR_021522