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Functional Calcium Imaging in Developing Cortical Networks
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Cortical activity emerges in region-specific patterns during early brain development.

Rodrigo Suárez1,2, Tobias Bluett1, Michael H McCullough1

  • 1The University of Queensland, Queensland Brain Institute; Brisbane, Australia.

Biorxiv : the Preprint Server for Biology
|February 24, 2023
PubMed
Summary

Spontaneous brain activity patterns, crucial for neural circuit development, emerge early in marsupial dunnarts, similar to rodents. These conserved patterns, including patchworks and waves, appear region-specifically before neurogenesis completion, aiding cortical development.

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Developmental Biology
  • Comparative Neurology

Background:

  • Precise neural circuit development necessitates spontaneous neural activity patterns before functional maturation.
  • Rodent cerebral cortex exhibits patchwork and wave activity patterns in somatosensory and visual regions at birth.
  • The emergence and presence of such activity patterns in non-eutherian mammals remain largely unexplored, posing questions for brain formation research.

Approach:

  • Utilized marsupial dunnarts, with postnatal cortical development, for a minimally invasive study of early brain activity.
  • Investigated progressively earlier developmental stages in dunnarts to pinpoint the onset and emergence of patterned cortical activity.
  • Compared dunnart cortical activity patterns to those observed in rodents to identify evolutionary conservation.

Key Points:

  • Discovered similar patchwork and travelling wave activity patterns in dunnart somatosensory and visual cortices at stage 27 (newborn equivalent).
  • Identified region-specific and sequential emergence of these patterns, evident as early as stage 24 (somatosensory) and stage 25 (visual) in dunnarts.
  • Observed pattern emergence coinciding with cortical layer establishment and thalamic axon innervation.

Conclusions:

  • Evolutionarily conserved patterns of neural activity may regulate early cortical development events, beyond sculpting synaptic connections.
  • These findings provide insights into the conserved mechanisms of brain formation across different mammalian lineages.
  • The study highlights the utility of marsupials for investigating developmental processes challenging to study in prenatal eutherians.