brain connections
A Neuronal Light Show
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
These colorful lights might look like a video vignette from one of the spectacular evening light shows taking place this holiday season. But they actually aren’t. These lights are illuminating the way to a much fuller understanding of the mammalian brain.
The video features a new research method called BARseq (Barcoded Anatomy Resolved by Sequencing). Created by a team of NIH-funded researchers led by Anthony Zador, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY, BARseq enables scientists to map in a matter of weeks the location of thousands of neurons in the mouse brain with greater precision than has ever been possible before.
How does it work? With BARseq, researchers generate uniquely identifying RNA barcodes and then tag one to each individual neuron within brain tissue. As reported recently in the journal Cell, those barcodes allow them to keep track of the location of an individual cell amid millions of neurons [1]. This also enables researchers to map the tangled paths of individual neurons from one region of the mouse brain to the next.
The video shows how the researchers read the barcodes. Each twinkling light is a barcoded neuron within a thin slice of mouse brain tissue. The changing colors from frame to frame correspond to one of the four letters, or chemical bases, in RNA (A=purple, G=blue, U=yellow, and C=white). A neuron that flashes blue, purple, yellow, white is tagged with a barcode that reads GAUC, while yellow, white, white, white is UCCC.
By sequencing and reading the barcodes to distinguish among seemingly identical cells, the researchers mapped the connections of more than 3,500 neurons in a mouse’s auditory cortex, a part of the brain involved in hearing. In fact, they report they’re now able to map tens of thousands of individual neurons in a mouse in a matter of weeks.
What makes BARseq even better than the team’s previous mapping approach, called MAPseq, is its ability to read the barcodes at their original location in the brain tissue [2]. As a result, they can produce maps with much finer resolution. It’s also possible to maintain other important information about each mapped neuron’s identity and function, including the expression of its genes.
Zador reports that they’re continuing to use BARseq to produce maps of other essential areas of the mouse brain with more detail than had previously been possible. Ultimately, these maps will provide a firm foundation for better understanding of human thought, consciousness, and decision-making, along with how such mental processes get altered in conditions such as autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, and depression.
Here’s wishing everyone a safe and happy holiday season. It’s been a fantastic year in science, and I look forward to bringing you more cool NIH-supported research in 2020!
References:
[1] High-Throughput Mapping of Long-Range Neuronal Projection Using In Situ Sequencing. Chen X, Sun YC, Zhan H, Kebschull JM, Fischer S, Matho K, Huang ZJ, Gillis J, Zador AM. Cell. 2019 Oct 17;179(3):772-786.e19.
[2] High-Throughput Mapping of Single-Neuron Projections by Sequencing of Barcoded RNA. Kebschull JM, Garcia da Silva P, Reid AP, Peikon ID, Albeanu DF, Zador AM. Neuron. 2016 Sep 7;91(5):975-987.
Links:
Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative (NIH)
Zador Lab (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY)
NIH Support: National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; National Institute on Drug Abuse; National Cancer Institute
Mapping the Brain’s Memory Bank
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
There’s a lot of groundbreaking research now underway to map the organization and internal wiring of the brain’s hippocampus, essential for memory, emotion, and spatial processing. This colorful video depicting a mouse hippocampus offers a perfect case in point.
The video presents the most detailed 3D atlas of the hippocampus ever produced, highlighting its five previously defined zones: dentate gyrus, CA1, CA2, CA3, and subiculum. The various colors within those zones represent areas with newly discovered and distinctive patterns of gene expression, revealing previously hidden layers of structural organization.
For instance, the subiculum, which sends messages from the hippocampus to other parts of the brain, includes several subregions. The subregions include the three marked in red, yellow, and blue at about 23 seconds into the video.
How’d the researchers do it? In the new study, published in Nature Neuroscience, the researchers started with the Allen Mouse Brain Atlas, a rich, publicly accessible 3D atlas of gene expression in the mouse brain. The team, led by Hong-Wei Dong, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, drilled down into the data to pull up 258 genes that are differentially expressed in the hippocampus and might be helpful for mapping purposes.
Some of those 258 genes were generally expressed only in previously defined portions of the hippocampus. Others were “turned on” only in discrete portions of known hippocampal domains, leading the researchers to define 20 distinct subregions that hadn’t been recognized before.
Combining these data, sophisticated analytical tools, and plenty of hard work, the team assembled this detailed atlas, together with connectivity data, to create a detailed wiring diagram. It includes about 200 signaling pathways that show how all those subregions network together and with other portions of the brain.
What’s really interesting is that the data also showed that these components of the hippocampus contribute to three relatively independent brain-wide communication networks. While much more study is needed, those three networks appear to relate to distinct functions of the hippocampus, including spatial navigation, social behaviors, and metabolism.
This more-detailed view of the hippocampus is just the latest from the NIH-funded Mouse Connectome Project. The ongoing project aims to create a complete connectivity atlas for the entire mouse brain.
The Mouse Connectome Project isn’t just for those with an interest in mice. Indeed, because the mouse and human brain are similarly organized, studies in the smaller mouse brain can help to provide a template for making sense of the larger and more complex human brain, with its tens of billions of interconnected neurons.
Ultimately, the hope is that this understanding of healthy brain connections will provide clues for better treating the brain’s abnormal connections and/or disconnections. They are involved in numerous neurological conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and autism spectrum disorder.
Reference:
[1] Integration of gene expression and brain-wide connectivity reveals the multiscale organization of mouse hippocampal networks. Bienkowski MS, Bowman I, Song MY, Gou L, Ard T, Cotter K, Zhu M, Benavidez NL, Yamashita S, Abu-Jaber J, Azam S, Lo D, Foster NN, Hintiryan H, Dong HW. Nat Neurosci. 2018 Nov;21(11):1628-1643.
Links:
Mouse Connectome Project (University of Southern California, Los Angeles)
Human Connectome Project (USC)
Allen Brain Map (Allen Institute, Seattle)
The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative (NIH)
NIH Support: National Institute of Mental Health; National Cancer Institute
