Project Summary The human retina is one of the most complex microcircuits of the central nervous system (CNS) and is a model of CNS neurodegenerative disease with unique advantages for microconnectomics technology advancement. The central retina or fovea mediates high acuity vision, drives activity in half of the brain, and is a critical locus for prevalent blinding disease. The fovea is small (
Project Summary Recent years have seen major breakthroughs in methodology for studying two complex yet fundamental aspects of brain structure: synaptic connectivity patterns and the heterogeneous distribution of molecules. Due to an ongoing technical barrier that has endured for decades, advances in circuit imaging and molecular imaging have progressed almost entirely in parallel, and there are still no routine methods for integrating molecular information into synaptic circuit maps.
PROJECT SUMMARY Identifying the cell types that make up each region of the brain and the patterns of synaptic connections through which they are linked is key to understanding how neural circuits give rise to all perception, cognition, and behavior. Rapid improvements in optical, molecular, and computational technologies are enabling large- scale projects aiming to comprehensively map the cell types that comprise the mammalian brain. Nevertheless, defining the microconnectivity of the thousands of cell types in the brain remains challenging due to a lack of scalable methods.
ABSTRACT A comprehensive census of neural cell types in the brain, together with molecular-genetic resources for cell-type specific labeling, is revolutionizing our ability to detect and monitor age, disease, and experience-dependent changes in neural connectivity.
The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative promotes the development and application of technologies to describe the temporal and spatial dynamics of cell types and neural circuits in the brain.
Project Summary Episodic memory is the ability to recall details about prior experiences. Researchers have historically relied on controlled item-recognition paradigms, in complement to autobiographical recall tasks, to investigate the biological substrates of episodic memory. Contemporary theories posit that episodic memory is supported by a constellation of neocortical regions, in concert with the hippocampus and medial temporal cortices.
ABSTRACT/SUMMARY The mouse somatosensory thalamus participates in fundamental processes including sensory processing, sleep and pathological rhythmic behaviors like seizure. Local thalamic interneurons have been considerably overlooked due to their sparsity in the total neuronal population. However, their extensive dendritic arborizations spanning almost the entire breadth of the nucleus, together with my preliminary data, point to an important role for these cells in thalamic functions.
Project Summary Understanding cell-type-specific gene functions, expression dynamics, and regulatory mechanisms in complex brains is still challenging.
