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Spontaneous Oscillations From In Vitro Slices of Rat Neocortex. Clara Boyd, Lucia Chemes, Alberto Lopez, Angelos Stavrou. Reports of Spontaneous Activity In the Brain. EEG recordings in humans (awake & asleep) show oscillations in the absence of sensory or motor
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Spontaneous Oscillations From In Vitro Slices of Rat Neocortex Clara Boyd, Lucia Chemes, Alberto Lopez, Angelos Stavrou
Reports of Spontaneous Activity In the Brain • EEG recordings in humans (awake & asleep) show oscillations in the absence of sensory or motor stimulation (10 Hz – 80 Hz) • Slices of mammalian neocortex maintained in vitro display slow oscillations (< 5 Hz)
Functional Relevance • Learning & Memory - storage & retrieval of neuronal activity patterns • Sensory-Motor Integration - replay of activity patterns during sleep • Neural Circuit Development - spontaneous activity in embryonic retina & thalamus before any visual experience • Regeneration & Repair Following Injury - synchronous neuronal activity is a signal for axonal sprouting after cortical lesions in the adult
Cellular Mechanisms • Developmental Ca+2 waves mediated by gap junctions in developing neocortex (IP3 second messenger) • Intrinsic (Pacemaker Connections) persistent Na+ current & hyperpolarization- activated cation current • Synaptic-Contact Mediated (Network Connections) activation of GABAergic & glutamatergic synapses
Observing Activity In Vitro: Method • Slice Preparation (area V of neocortex, 300m thick) • Loading with Ca+2 indicator Fura-2AM & imaging via 2-Photon Microscopy Correlation between Action Potentials and Somatic Ca+2 Transients Relationship between action potentials of single neuron & population state of the network
Image Analysis: defining neurons • Image enhancement for visual analysis • Definition of neuron • Looking for circle-shaped objects around 10m diameter • Imaging performs a slice, so neurons can be cut and sizes may vary • Problems • Neurons have deferent shapes and sizes • Background is not uniform and contains calcium traces from dendrites • Neurons change ‘shapes’ in time
Image Analysis: extracting neurons threshold Enhanced image cleaning separation
Image Analysis: tracking neurons in time • Neurons recognition have problems • Some neurons may split, merge, appear and disappear because of the recognition algorithm (noise) • They may be recognized as new neurons every frame Shape change split merge • The tracking algorithm takes car of this issues, recognizing all those problems and tracking neurons even if the recognition is not perfect • Tracks exact shape every frame, reducing noise
Statistical Correlation of the Spike Trains Numberof pairs Correlation of pairs
Future Directions • Obtain Data with higher sampling ratio (at least 4-5Hz. • Create a spacial mapping of the correlated neurons in the image. • Being able to predict according to the spatial position of the neuron the probability of being connected to another neuron for different areas of the brain. • Use the same image analysis in different layers of a 3-D image and predict with greater accuracy the connection. • Repeat the experiment with different images and test the filters and the thresholds already implemented.