Mapping cortical mesoscopic networks of single spiking cortical or sub-cortical neurons
- University of British Columbia, Canada
- Capital Medical University, China
Abstract
Understanding the basis of brain function requires knowledge of cortical operations over wide-spatial scales, but also within the context of single neurons. In vivo, wide-field GCaMP imaging and sub-cortical/cortical cellular electrophysiology were used in mice to investigate relationships between spontaneous single neuron spiking and mesoscopic cortical activity. We make use of a rich set of cortical activity motifs that are present in spontaneous activity in anesthetized and awake animals. A mesoscale spike-triggered averaging procedure allowed the identification of motifs that are preferentially linked to individual spiking neurons by employing genetically targeted indicators of neuronal activity. Thalamic neurons predicted and reported specific cycles of wide-scale cortical inhibition/excitation. In contrast, spike-triggered maps derived from single cortical neurons yielded spatio-temporal maps expected for regional cortical consensus function. This approach can define network relationships between any point source of neuronal spiking and mesoscale cortical maps.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Canadian Institutes of Health Research (MOP-12675)
- Timothy H Murphy
Canadian Institutes of Health Research (FDN-143209)
- Timothy H Murphy
International Alliance of Translational Neuroscience (N/A)
- Dongsheng Xiao
Brain Canada, Canadian Neurophotonics Platform
- Jeff M LeDue
- Timothy H Murphy
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: Animal protocols (A13-0336 and A14-0266) were approved by the University of British Columbia Animal Care Committee and conformed to the Canadian Council on Animal Care and Use guidelines.
Copyright
© 2017, Xiao et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 6,764
- views
-
- 1,233
- downloads
-
- 112
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Mapping cortical mesoscopic networks of single spiking cortical or sub-cortical neurons
eLife 6:e19976.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.19976
Further reading
-
- Neuroscience
In albino mice and EphB1 knockout mice, mistargeted retinal ganglion cell axons form dense islands of axon terminals in the dorsal lateral geniculate nuclei (dLGN). The formation of these islands of retinal input depends on developmental patterns of spontaneous retinal activity. We reconstructed the microcircuitry of the activity-dependent islands and found that the boundaries of the island represent a remarkably strong segregation within retinogeniculate connectivity. We conclude that when sets of retinal input are established in the wrong part of the dLGN, the developing circuitry responds by forming a synaptically isolated subcircuit within the otherwise fully connected network. The fact that there is a developmental starting condition that can induce a synaptically segregated microcircuit has important implications for our understanding of the organization of visual circuits and our understanding of the implementation of activity-dependent development.
-
- Neuroscience
The neuropeptides Substance P and CGRPα have long been thought important for pain sensation. Both peptides and their receptors are expressed at high levels in pain-responsive neurons from the periphery to the brain making them attractive therapeutic targets. However, drugs targeting these pathways individually did not relieve pain in clinical trials. Since Substance P and CGRPα are extensively co-expressed, we hypothesized that their simultaneous inhibition would be required for effective analgesia. We therefore generated Tac1 and Calca double knockout (DKO) mice and assessed their behavior using a wide range of pain-relevant assays. As expected, Substance P and CGRPα peptides were undetectable throughout the nervous system of DKO mice. To our surprise, these animals displayed largely intact responses to mechanical, thermal, chemical, and visceral pain stimuli, as well as itch. Moreover, chronic inflammatory pain and neurogenic inflammation were unaffected by loss of the two peptides. Finally, neuropathic pain evoked by nerve injury or chemotherapy treatment was also preserved in peptide-deficient mice. Thus, our results demonstrate that even in combination, Substance P and CGRPα are not required for the transmission of acute and chronic pain.
