RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Distribution and strength of interlaminar synaptic connectivity in mouse primary visual cortex revealed by two-photon optogenetic stimulation
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2019.12.13.876128
DO 10.1101/2019.12.13.876128
A1 Travis A. Hage
A1 Alice Bosma-Moody
A1 Christopher A. Baker
A1 Megan B. Kratz
A1 Luke Campagnola
A1 Tim Jarsky
A1 Hongkui Zeng
A1 Gabe J. Murphy
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/12/15/2019.12.13.876128.abstract
AB The most common synaptic connections between neurons in different cortical layers form the basis of the canonical cortical microcircuit. Understanding of cortical function will require further development and application of methods to efficiently characterize synaptic connections within and outside of the canonical pathway. Accordingly, we measured synaptic inputs onto superficial excitatory neurons in response to sequential two-photon optogenetic stimulation of neurons in deeper layers. Layer 4 excitatory neurons and somatostatin-neurons within layer 2/3 represented the most common sources of input. Although connections from excitatory and somatostatin-neurons in layer 5 were less common, the amplitudes of synaptic responses were equally strong. We examined synaptic strength across all connections, as well as the relationships between the strength of connections diverging from a common presynaptic neuron or converging to a single target. While the overall distribution indicates synaptic weight is concentrated to a few connections, strong excitatory connections are distributed across cells.