Photoinactivation of A Portion of A Neurone For Long-Term Studies of Its Role In Behaviour

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Abstract
An important method in the study of the neural basis of behaviour is the removal from a nerve circuit of a single cell in vivo and the subsequent search for changes in behaviour (Atkins et al. 1984; Comer, 1985). In such studies it can also be useful to remove only a part of a cell, such as a segment of its dendritic tree or axon. This can be done by filling the cell with the fluorescent dye Lucifer Yellow (LY) and irradiating the particular segment to be removed (Jacobs & Miller, 1985). However, for behavioural testing, it is often necessary to wait 1 day for the animal to recover from surgery. It is not yet clear in any system whether a small part of cell inactivated in this way repairs itself or remains inactive after 1 day. In this paper we examine this question of the permanence of LY photoinactivation (Miller & Selverston, 1979), and carry out behavioural tests showing the usefulness of this method.