Spontaneous cortical activity alternates between motifs defined by regional axonal projections
Majid H Mohajerani1, Allen W Chan, Mostafa Mohsenvand
11] Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. [2] Brain Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. [3] [4].
Nature Neuroscience
|August 27, 2013
Summary
Spontaneous brain activity in mice reflects sensory processing, including vision, audition, and touch. The brain
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Systems Neuroscience
- Computational Neuroscience
Background:
- Spontaneous neural activity plays a crucial role in brain function.
- Understanding the relationship between spontaneous and evoked activity is essential for deciphering neural processing.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how spontaneous brain activity patterns in mice reflect sensory processing.
- To determine if the brain's structural connections predict patterns of neural activity.
Main Methods:
- Utilized millisecond-timescale voltage-sensitive dye imaging in awake and anesthetized adult mice.
- Employed channelrhodopsin-2 for direct cortical activation.
- Performed regional analysis of activity spread and correlation analysis between functional circuits and intracortical axonal projections.
Main Results:
- Identified sensory-evoked and hemisphere-wide activity motifs within spontaneous brain activity.
- Observed modality-specific sources and sinks for sensory information processing.
- Found that intracortical monosynaptic structural connections predict patterns of spontaneous and sensory-evoked depolarization.
Conclusions:
- The brain's intracortical monosynaptic connectome shapes spontaneous cortical activity.
- Spontaneous activity patterns can serve as a neural basis for sensory processing.
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