Transcranial Calcium Macro-Imaging From the Auditory Cortex of Thy1-Cre-Driven GCaMP8 Transgenic Rats.

Overview

1. Department of Physiological Sciences, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Wakayama Medical University, Wakayama, Japan
2. Department of Animal Model Development, Brain Research Institute, Niigata University, Niigata, Japan
3. Department of Neuroscience of Disease, Brain Research Institute, Niigata University, Niigata, Japan
4. Department of Molecular Genetics, Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Fukushima Medical University School of Medicine, Fukushima, Japan
5. Division of Laboratory Animal Research, Aichi Medical University School of Medicine, Aichi, Japan
6. Division of Animal Genetics, Laboratory Animal Research Center, Institute of Medical Science, the University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

Abstract

Background: Genetically encoded calcium indicators such as GCaMP enable us to monitor neuronal activities from living animals at synaptic levels as well as at whole‐brain levels. However, the genetic variation of GCaMP transgenic rats is limited compared with the various demands for neuroscience studies on rats.

Method: We established two transgenic rat lines: one expressing Cre recombinase under the control of the Thy1 promoter and another knock‐in line carrying a floxed STOP cassette followed by GCaMP8 inserted into the β‐actin locus. We mated these two transgenic rats and produced the Thy1‐Cre‐driven GCaMP8‐expressing rats.

Results: Approximately 80% of cortical neurons were positive for the GCaMP immunoreactivity. The GCaMP8‐expressing rats were subjected to transcranial calcium imaging from the auditory cortex under anesthesia. With this simple procedure, we were able to detect the maximum responses to 68 dB click sounds;ΔF/F0 = 1.2%. The rise time reaching the peak response was approximately 150 ms, and the half decay time was about 150 ms.

Conclusions: These results suggest that the present GCaMP8‐expressing rats as well as their parental transgenic rat strains offer a new tool for cortical macro‐imaging and functional mapping with the transcranial approach.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

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Data

Datasets cited

• zenodo:18765533 — at Zenodo; found in “Data Availability Statement”
• zenodo:18765534 — at Zenodo; found in “Data Availability Statement”

Data Availability Statement

The transgenic rat lines generated in this study are freely available from the National Bioresource Project for the Rat (Japan). The original, non–contrast‐adjusted and non‐cropped raw TIFF images of the immunostaining results are provided as Data S1: #2–#10. The LabVIEW program used to operate the stimulation triggers and image acquisition systems is provided as Data S2: #11. Image datasets averaged across trials (multipage TIFF format), which form the basis of the figures presented in this study, are included as Data S3: #12. The original raw calcium imaging data (TDMS format), as well as the corresponding TIFF‐formatted images, are available in the public data repository Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18765534 or https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18765533).

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

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Version 1, 27 September 2026: the first record

Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, issue, pages, dates, 11 authors, 5 keywords, 11 MeSH terms, 1 funder, 39 references.

Cite

This paper

Tohmi, M., Namba, H., Kawamura, M., Hishida, R., Iguchi, S., Kobayashi, K., Matsushita, N., Mashimo, T., Natsume, R., Sakimura, K., & Nawa, H. (2026). Transcranial Calcium Macro-Imaging From the Auditory Cortex of Thy1-Cre-Driven GCaMP8 Transgenic Rats. Neuropsychopharmacology reports, 46(2), e70113. https://doi.org/10.1002/npr2.70113

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