Neuronal Soma Receive Information from Neighboring Neurons

Neuronal Soma Receive Information from Neighboring Neurons

Submitted by Miquel Bosch of the Bear Lab at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory

Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences

Miquel Bosch
Bear Lab, Picower Institute for Learning and Memory
Two-Photon Micrograph

"This is a two-photon microscopy image of a live neuron from an organotypic rat hippocampal slice culture transfected with PSD-95-mCherry to visualize sites of postsynaptic contacts.  Each bright puncta is an excitatory synapse.  We were testing a virus designed to infect neurons to express PSD-95-mCherry, which will show us the position of the excitatory synapses. Our goal was to inject this virus in the rat brain and perform in vivo two-photon live imaging of the evolution of synaptic contacts during experience-driven morphological changes in the visual cortex network.

Our larger goal is to unravel the molecular mechanisms of learning and memory at the most fundamental level: the individual synapse."

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