Wide-Field Calcium Imaging of Mesoscale Networks Underlying the Encoding of Skilled Voluntary Movement

The cortex-wide mechanisms coordinating skilled voluntary movements in rodents are still largely unexplored. The combination of optical imaging techniques, such as wide-field microscopy, with the use of transgenic animals made it possible to monitor mesoscale cortical activity during the execution of these goal-directed behaviors. Here we describe the development of a setup for large-scale functional imaging integrated within a customized behavioral platform for training mice to perform a goal-directed movement of reach-to-grasp (RtG). We report a protocol to perform the surgery for the realization of the optical window, the methods to motivate the animal to learn and perform the RtG task in the behavioral platform, and the image processing and data analysis of the behavioral data and the fluorescent calcium image will be described.