Saturated Reconstruction of a Volume of Neocortex

Jan 1, 2015·
Narayanan Kasthuri
,
Kenneth Jeffrey Hayworth
,
Daniel Raimund Berger
,
Richard Lee Schalek
,
José Angel Conchello
,
Seymour Knowles-Barley
,
Dongil Lee
,
Amelio Vázquez-Reina
,
Verena Kaynig
,
Thouis Raymond Jones
,
Mike Roberts
,
Josh Lyskowski Morgan
,
Juan Carlos Tapia
,
H Sebastian Seung
,
William Gray Roncal
,
Joshua Tzvi Vogelstein
,
Randal Burns
,
Daniel Lewis Sussman
,
Carey Eldin Priebe
,
Hanspeter Pfister
,
Jeff William Lichtman
· 0 min read
Abstract
We describe automated technologies to probe the structure of neural tissue at nanometer resolution and use them to generate a saturated reconstruction of a sub-volume of mouse neocortex in which all cellular objects (axons, dendrites, and glia) and many sub-cellular components (synapses, synaptic vesicles, spines, spine apparati, postsynaptic densities, and mitochondria) are rendered and itemized in a database. We explore these data to study physical properties of brain tissue. For example, by tracing the trajectories of all excitatory axons and noting their juxtapositions, both synaptic and non-synaptic, with every dendritic spine we refute the idea that physical proximity is sufficient to predict synaptic connectivity (the so-called Peters’ rule). This online minable database provides general access to the intrinsic complexity of the neocortex and enables further data-driven inquiries.
Type
Publication
Cell