The brain is extremely complex, with broadly distributed networks of neurons that communicate with each other, ultimately producing thoughts, perceptions, and behaviors. Understanding how neurons communicate across long distances through these networks has been a technological challenge in neuroscience, but now scientists from Hillel Adesnik’s lab at UC Berkeley have developed a microscope that allows users to observe and control the activity of individual neurons in distant brain areas simultaneously, enabling scientists to study how they talk to each other.
Adesnik is a professor of neuroscience, Pivotal Life Sciences Chancellor's Chair in Neuroscience, and a member of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at UC Berkeley. His team published their findings in Nature Neuroscience on August 3, 2026. Their first-of-a-kind device is called a two-photon holographic mesoscope. It combines two-photon microscope technology with holographic stimulation of neurons at the mesoscale — i.e. across large areas of the brain.
The researchers showed that the mesoscope could “read” and “write” neural activity at the same time across large areas of the cerebral cortex in mice, at near-single-cell resolution. After activating specific neurons in one or more areas of the brain, the scientists were able to read out the downstream effects on neurons in other areas. The researchers say that this technological breakthrough will help scientists map connections and test causal relationships between neurons in distant brain areas, making it an important new tool for neuroscience.
"What makes this work exciting is that it gives us a way to both observe and precisely control brain activity across much larger areas than was previously possible, while still targeting individual cells,” said Adesnik and postdoctoral fellow and co-lead author Lamiae Abdeladim. “The brain works through distributed networks spanning many regions, so understanding how these networks interact requires tools that can operate at both scales at once. Our system brings us closer to being able to watch these large computations unfold and intervene with cellular precision."
Other authors on the paper include co-lead authors Uday K. Jagadisan and Hyeyoung Shin, and Mora B. Ogando, all current or former members of the Adesnik lab at UC Berkeley. This work was funded by National Institutes of Health grants R01NS128772, UF1NS107574, R01MH117824 and R01EY023756. Adesnik is a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator. The work was also supported by a Weill Neurohub fellowship and Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface (1243586) to Abdeladim.
Read the paper
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Probing inter-areal computations with a two-photon holographic mesoscope, Lamiae Abdeladim, Uday K. Jagadisan, Hyeyoung Shin, Mora B. Ogando & Hillel Adesnik, Nature Neuroscience, August 3, 2026
