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Primate neuronal connections are sparse in cortex as compared to mouse.

Gregg A Wildenberg¹, Matt R Rosen², Jack Lundell²

¹Department of Neurobiology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA; Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL 60439, USA.

|September 15, 2021

Summary

Primate neurons have fewer synapses than mouse neurons, impacting neural processing models. This difference, observed in the visual cortex, suggests synapse efficiency may be key to brain complexity.

Keywords:

brain wiring connectomics electron microscopy evolution mouse primate visual cortex

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Computational Neuroscience
Comparative Neuroanatomy

Background:

Understanding neuronal differences between species is crucial for generalized models of neural information processing.
The primary visual cortex (V1) is a key area for studying visual information processing.

Purpose of the Study:

To compare synaptic connectivity in layer 2/3 neurons between adult Rhesus macaques and mice.
To investigate differences in excitatory and inhibitory synapse ratios (E/I) across identified cell types.

Main Methods:

Reconstruction of 15,748 individual synapses in the primary visual cortex of macaques and mice.
Analysis of synaptic input onto identified excitatory and inhibitory neurons in layer 2/3.
Utilizing artificial recurrent neural networks (RNNs) to model synapse formation and maintenance costs.

Main Results:

Primate excitatory and inhibitory neurons receive 2-5 times fewer excitatory and inhibitory synapses compared to similar mouse neurons.
Primate excitatory neurons exhibit lower E/I ratios than mouse neurons, while inhibitory neurons show similar E/I ratios.
Inhibitory axon properties (synapse size, frequency) remain consistent; inhibitory innervation is local and specific in both species.
RNN models demonstrate that penalizing synapse creation/maintenance reduces connections per node, mirroring primate-to-mouse neuron differences.

Conclusions:

Primate neurons are less densely connected than mouse neurons, suggesting a potential trade-off between synapse number and efficiency.
The findings provide insights into the evolution of neural architecture and information processing strategies.
Computational modeling supports the hypothesis that synapse cost influences network structure, potentially explaining differences in neuronal connectivity across species.