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Updated: Jul 29, 2025

Large-scale Three-dimensional Imaging of Cellular Organization in the Mouse Neocortex
Published on: September 5, 2018
Single-neuron analysis of dendrites and axons reveals the network organization in mouse prefrontal cortex
Le Gao1, Sang Liu1,2,3, Yanzhi Wang1,2
1Institute of Neuroscience, State Key Laboratory of Neuroscience, CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China.
Abstract:
The structures of dendrites and axons form the basis for the connectivity of neural network, but their precise relationship at single-neuron level remains unclear. Here we report the complete dendrite and axon morphology of nearly 2,000 neurons in mouse prefrontal cortex (PFC). We identified morphological variations of somata, dendrites and axons across laminar layers and PFC subregions and the general rules of somatodendritic scaling with cytoarchitecture. We uncovered 24 morphologically distinguishable dendrite subtypes in 1,515 pyramidal projection neurons and 405 atypical pyramidal projection neurons and spiny stellate neurons with unique axon projection patterns. Furthermore, correspondence analysis among dendrites, local axons and long-range axons revealed coherent morphological changes associated with electrophysiological phenotypes. Finally, integrative dendrite-axon analysis uncovered the organization of potential intra-column, inter-hemispheric and inter-column connectivity among projection neuron types in PFC. Together, our study provides a comprehensive structural repertoire for the reconstruction and analysis of PFC neural network.

