Chronic microsensors for longitudinal, subsecond dopamine detection in behaving animals

Neurotransmission operates on a millisecond timescale, but is changed by normal experience or neuropathology over days, weeks or even months. Despite the great importance of long-term neurotransmitter dynamics, no technique exists to track these changes within a subject from day to day over extended periods of time. Here we describe and characterize a microsensor that can detect the neurotransmitter dopamine with subsecond temporal resolution over months in vivo in rats and mice.