Journal ArticleDOI
Wiring specificity in the direction-selectivity circuit of the retina
Reads0
Chats0
TLDR
It is shown, using serial block-face electron microscopy and two-photon calcium imaging, that the dendrites of mouse starburst amacrine cells make highly specific synapses with direction-selective ganglion cells depending on the ganglION cell’s preferred direction.Abstract:
The proper connectivity between neurons is essential for the implementation of the algorithms used in neural computations, such as the detection of directed motion by the retina. The analysis of neuronal connectivity is possible with electron microscopy, but technological limitations have impeded the acquisition of high-resolution data on a large enough scale. Here we show, using serial block-face electron microscopy and two-photon calcium imaging, that the dendrites of mouse starburst amacrine cells make highly specific synapses with direction-selective ganglion cells depending on the ganglion cell's preferred direction. Our findings indicate that a structural (wiring) asymmetry contributes to the computation of direction selectivity. The nature of this asymmetry supports some models of direction selectivity and rules out others. It also puts constraints on the developmental mechanisms behind the formation of synaptic connections. Our study demonstrates how otherwise intractable neurobiological questions can be addressed by combining functional imaging with the analysis of neuronal connectivity using large-scale electron microscopy.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Advanced optical techniques to explore brain structure and function
Ludovico Silvestri,Anna Letizia Allegra Mascaro,Jacopo Lotti,Leonardo Sacconi,Francesco S. Pavone +4 more
TL;DR: Novel implementations of light-sheet microscopy are described to resolve neuronal anatomy in whole fixed brains with cellular resolution and how nonlinear microscopy in combination with novel voltage sensitive dyes allow optical registrations of action potential across a population of neurons opening promising prospective in understanding brain functionality.
Journal ArticleDOI
Morphology and function of three VIP-expressing amacrine cell types in the mouse retina.
TL;DR: Genetic and viral strategies are combined to identify and to characterize morphologically three vasoactive intestinal polypeptide-expressing GABAergic AC types (VIP1, VIP2, and VIP3-ACs) in mice and contribute to the diversity of inhibitory and neuromodulatory signals in the retina.
Journal ArticleDOI
Visualizing viral protein structures in cells using genetic probes for correlated light and electron microscopy.
Horng D. Ou,Thomas J. Deerinck,Eric A. Bushong,Mark H. Ellisman,Clodagh C. O’Shea,Clodagh C. O’Shea +5 more
TL;DR: New methods to visualize viral proteins and structures at high resolutions in situ using correlated light and electron microscopy (CLEM) are discussed, including the use of genetically encoded protein fusions that oxidize diaminobenzidine into an osmiophilic polymer that can be visualized by EM.
Journal ArticleDOI
A Bayesian compressed-sensing approach for reconstructing neural connectivity from subsampled anatomical data
Yuriy Mishchenko,Liam Paninski +1 more
TL;DR: A statistical approach for connectivity reconstruction that relies on relatively easy-to-obtain measurements using fluorescent probes such as synaptic markers, cytoplasmic dyes, transsynaptic tracers, or activity-dependent dyes and shows that the spatial heterogeneity and biological variability in the connectivity matrix can be estimated using the same method.
Journal ArticleDOI
Synaptic connections of first‐stage visual neurons in the locust Schistocerca gregaria extend evolution of tetrad synapses back 200 million years
Stefan Wernitznig,F.C. Rind,Peter Pölt,Armin Zankel,Elisabeth Pritz,Dagmar Kolb,Elisabeth Bock,Gerd Leitinger +7 more
TL;DR: To reconstruct circuits for vision in the larger brain of a locust, a phylogenetically old, flying insect, serial block‐face scanning electron microscopy was adapted, revealing the emergence of tetrads in an arthropod group present 200 million years before muscomorph flies appeared, coinciding with the early evolution of flight.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Two-Photon Laser Scanning Fluorescence Microscopy
TL;DR: The fluorescence emission increased quadratically with the excitation intensity so that fluorescence and photo-bleaching were confined to the vicinity of the focal plane as expected for cooperative two-photon excitation.
Journal ArticleDOI
User-guided 3D active contour segmentation of anatomical structures: Significantly improved efficiency and reliability
Paul A. Yushkevich,Joseph Piven,Heather C. Hazlett,Rachel Gimpel Smith,Sean Ho,James C. Gee,Guido Gerig +6 more
TL;DR: The methods and software engineering philosophy behind this new tool, ITK-SNAP, are described and the results of validation experiments performed in the context of an ongoing child autism neuroimaging study are provided, finding that SNAP is a highly reliable and efficient alternative to manual tracing.
Journal ArticleDOI
The structure of the nervous system of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans
TL;DR: The structure and connectivity of the nervous system of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has been deduced from reconstructions of electron micrographs of serial sections as discussed by the authors.
Journal ArticleDOI
The mechanism of directionally selective units in rabbit's retina.
Horace Barlow,W. R. Levick +1 more
TL;DR: Experiments are described which show, first, that directional selectivity is not due to optical aberrations of some kind and, secondly, that it is not a simple matter of the latency of response varying systematically across the receptive field.
Journal ArticleDOI
Serial block−face scanning electron microscopy to reconstruct three−dimensional tissue nanostructure
Winfried Denk,Heinz Horstmann +1 more
TL;DR: It is demonstrated that datasets meeting these requirements can be obtained by automated block-face imaging combined with serial sectioning inside the chamber of a scanning electron microscope, opening the possibility of automatically obtaining the electron-microscope-level 3D datasets needed to completely reconstruct the connectivity of neuronal circuits.
Related Papers (5)
Serial block−face scanning electron microscopy to reconstruct three−dimensional tissue nanostructure
Winfried Denk,Heinz Horstmann +1 more