Striatal calcium transients detected by fiber photometry propagate to axons

Abstract

ARISING FROM: A. Legaria et al., Nature Neuroscience https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-022-01152-z (2022). Calcium fiber photometry is a popular technique for recording the activity of neuronal populations defined by their gene expression or connectivity. In a recent study, Legaria et al., present evidence that the calcium signal recorded with fiber photometry primarily reports local fluctuations in neuropil Ca2+, rather than somatic Ca2+ influx corresponding to neural firing, as has been assumed by the field. This raises the question of whether fiber photometry transients are a valid measure of the propagation of information from neural soma to their axons. We addressed this question directly, recording coincident activity from both the somato-dendritic region and downstream axons of striatal neural populations. Our findings demonstrate that calcium events are reliably propagated to axons, supporting the interpretation that these events reflect neuronal firing.