PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Rachel M. Rahn
AU  - Lindsey M. Brier
AU  - Annie R. Bice
AU  - Matthew D. Reisman
AU  - Joseph D. Dougherty
AU  - Joseph P. Culver
TI  - Functional connectivity of the developing mouse cortex
AID  - 10.1101/2021.04.04.438377
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.04.04.438377
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/04/15/2021.04.04.438377.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/04/15/2021.04.04.438377.full
AB  - Cross-sectional studies have established a variety of structural, synaptic and cell physiological changes corresponding to key critical periods in cortical development. However, the emergence of functional connectivity (FC) in development has not been fully characterized, and hemodynamic-based measures are vulnerable to any neurovascular coupling changes occurring in parallel. We therefore used optical fluorescence imaging to trace longitudinal calcium FC in the awake, resting-state mouse cortex in the same mice at 5 developmental time points beginning at postnatal day 15 (P15) and ending in early adulthood (P60), resulting in over 500 imaging epochs with both calcium and hemodynamics available as a resource for the field. Proof-of-principle analyses revealed that calcium FC displayed coherent functional maps as early as P15, and FC significantly varied in connections between many regions across development, with the developmental trajectory’s shape specific to the functional region. This longitudinal developmental calcium FC dataset provides an essential resource for further algorithm development and studies of healthy development and neurodevelopmental disorders.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.