Cerebral cortex: Study ingons of calcium imaging that is connected to the brain's interval.

On May 14, the Institute of Neuroscience of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligent Technology, and the National Key Laboratory of Neuroscience, Pu Muming, published an online research article entitled "Functional Structures of Internal Connections and Feedback Connections in the Primary Visual Cortex" in the Journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
this work has established a two-color calcium imaging method designed to study brain interstituments, and this method is used to explore the functional structure of the two input pathways projected into the primary visual cortex (V1) in theof the tree.
the cerebral cortex is made up of many areas responsible for different functions.
even in a single region, the function of neurons often exhibits precise tissue patterns based on their position on the cortex.
, for example, in V1, which reacts to different visual orientations, neurons are not disorderly mixed together, but are distributed across the cortex in a car-like structure.
since neurons' reaction characteristics are determined by the next level of input they receive, what input pathways are generated by the V1 windmill-like functional structure? Do these input paths have windmill-like functional structures? These questions have plagued visual cortex researchers for years.
the orientation diagram of the internal connection of the primary visual cortex, the windmill-like functional structure and the functional structure of the primary visual cortex itself are very similar. the
scale is 100 microns.
to solve this problem, the Pumuming research team first established a set of calcium-indicating protein-based calcium-indicating protein imaging method based on synaptic pre-synaptic positioning.
the researchers connected the calcium indication protein to the cystic protein, successfully achieved the synaptic positioning of the calcium-indicated protein, and further constructed a variety of versions with different colors and reaction properties.
so that the researchers could express different colors of calcium-indicating proteins on different input pathways and compare the reaction properties of these different pathways simultaneously through bicolor calcium imaging.
using this strategy, the researchers found that in the input path projected to V1, the internal connection from V1 itself (the intrinsic connection) and the feedback connection from the secondary visual cortex (Feedback connection) had windmill-like functional structures.
comparing the functional structure of the V1 neurons themselves, the researchers found that the structureof of the internal connections of V1 was precisely aligned with them, while the feedback connections from V2 to V1 were relatively fragmented.
this means that the different input paths of V1 have different functions in the process of producing their functional structure. In addition to revealing the functional structure of the input pathways projected into the primary visual cortex, the two-color calcium imaging technique established in this work is expected to be applied to a variety of research systems, and become a common tool for studying the functional structure of connections between brain regions, providing a new tool for neuroscience researchers.

this work was carried out by Zhang Qingfang and Li Wei as co-first authors, under the guidance of associate researcher Wen Yunqing and researcher Pu Muming.
topics are funded by the Strategic Leading Science and Technology Project (Class B) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences," the Brain Function Linked Map Program, the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Frontier Science Key Research Program, the International Partnership Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Natural Science Foundation, the Shanghai Basic Research Key Project, and the Ministry of Science and Technology's "973" project, which are independently completed in the Neurology.
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