Cortical acetylcholine dynamics are predicted by cholinergic axon activity and behavior state

Even under spontaneous conditions and in the absence of changing environmental demands, awake animals alternate between increased or decreased periods of alertness. These changes in brain state can occur rapidly, on a timescale of seconds, and neuromodulators such as acetylcholine (ACh) are thought to play an important role in driving these spontaneous state transitions. Here, we perform the first simultaneous imaging of ACh sensors and GCaMP-expressing axons in vivo, to examine the spatiotemporal properties of cortical ACh activity and release during spontaneous changes in behavioral state. We observed a high correlation between simultaneously recorded basal forebrain axon activity and neuromodulator sensor fluorescence around periods of locomotion and pupil dilation. Consistent with volume transmission of ACh, increases in axon activity were accompanied by increases in local ACh levels that fell off with the distance from the nearest axon. GRAB-ACh fluorescence could be accurately predicted from axonal activity alone, providing the first validation that neuromodulator axon activity is a reliable proxy for nearby neuromodulator levels. Deconvolution of fluorescence traces allowed us to account for the kinetics of the GRAB-ACh sensor and emphasized the rapid clearance of ACh for smaller transients outside of running periods. Finally, we trained a predictive model of ACh fluctuations from the combination of pupil size and running speed; this model performed better than using either variable alone, and generalized well to unseen data. Overall, these results contribute to a growing understanding of the precise timing and spatial characteristics of cortical ACh during fast brain state transitions.