Associate Prof Ruth Empson, of the University of Otago physiology department, is part of an international collaboration that has developed an exciting new set of tools to probe cell types in the brain.
Prof Empson has also been using university's revolutionary new $1 million ''multi-photon microscope'', which uses infra-red light to see into living organs and cells with ''unparalleled detail and speed''.
The powerful new analytical tools would greatly advance international efforts to understand in more detail how different parts of the brain connected and communicated during behaviour.
It had been ''amazing'' to be part of this ''important international effort'' from New Zealand, she said.
The new approach would also help researchers, including at Otago, understand ''the significance of connectivity changes'' among a specific group of motor neurons after a stroke.
The scientists' work, reported last week in leading journal Neuron, partly involves using techniques that manipulate the genes of a small subset of cells so they glow under fluorescent microscopes.
By manipulating unique gene markers for each cell type into fluorescent labels or probes, the structure and function of various types of neurons can be visualised and studied.
The new tools also used light to make the cells fire a signal using a technique called optogenetics.
The combination of fluorescent imaging and optogenetic stimulation revealed where specific cells were, when they were active and how they interacted with other cells.
These tools were now helping an exciting new Marsden-funded collaboration with Prof Thomas Knopfel, of Imperial College London, and Dr Andrew Clarkson, of the Otago anatomy department, she said.