Track2p

Track2p enables robust long-term tracking of individual neurons across longitudinal two-photon calcium imaging recordings in the developing brain, supporting analysis of neuronal dynamics and representational stability over time.

Key Features:

• Sequential image registration: Corrects for brain growth using a two-step procedure involving image registration followed by neuron matching across days using growth-corrected alignment.
• Automated cell tracking: Enables robust tracking of hundreds of individual neurons across consecutive days despite substantial brain growth and morphological changes.
• High accuracy validation: Benchmarking against manually tracked neurons confirmed high tracking accuracy.
• Longitudinal activity analysis: Supports quantification of neuronal dynamics including activity rates, firing synchrony, and population event properties over developmental time.

Scientific Applications:

• Developmental neurobiology: Identifies developmental transitions in neuronal activity statistics, such as the emergence of arousal state modulation around postnatal day 11.
• Circuit maturation studies: Reveals shifts from highly synchronized and spatially organized population events to more decorrelated, behavior-dependent firing during early postnatal development.
• Neurodevelopmental disorder research: Enables identification of potential deviations in developmental trajectories associated with neurodevelopmental disorders.
• Adult circuit plasticity: Supports examination of long-term properties of adult circuits including learning and representational stability.
• Disease model biomarker discovery: Facilitates identification of early circuit-level biomarkers of neurodevelopmental disorders through longitudinal tracking in disease models.

Methodology:

Track2p uses a two-step procedure: first correcting for brain growth using image registration, then matching neurons across days using growth-corrected alignment. The method was validated on two-photon calcium imaging data from the barrel cortex of mouse pups over one postnatal week.