RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 High resolution data-driven model of the mouse connectome
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 293019
DO 10.1101/293019
A1 Joseph E. Knox
A1 Kameron Decker Harris
A1 Nile Graddis
A1 Jennifer D. Whitesell
A1 Hongkui Zeng
A1 Julie A. Harris
A1 Eric Shea-Brown
A1 Stefan Mihalas
YR 2018
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/04/01/293019.abstract
AB Knowledge of mesoscopic brain connectivity is important for understanding inter- and intra-region information processing. Models of structural connectivity are typically constructed and analyzed with the assumption that regions are homogeneous. We instead use the Allen Mouse Brain Connectivity Atlas to construct a model of whole brain connectivity at the scale of 100 µm voxels. The dataset used consists of 366 anterograde tracing experiments in wild type C7BL/6 mice, mapping fluorescently-labeled neuronal projections brain-wide. Inferring spatial connectivity with this dataset remains underdetermined, since the approximately 2 × 105 source voxels outnumber the number of experiments. To address this, we assume that connection patterns and strengths vary smoothly across major brain divisions. We model the connectivity at each voxel as a radial basis kernel-weighted average of the projection patterns of nearby injections. The voxel model outperforms a previous regional model in predicting held-out experiments and compared to a human-curated dataset. This voxel-scale model of the mouse connectome permits researchers to extend their previous analyses of structural connectivity to unprecedented levels of resolution, and allows for comparison with functional imaging and other datasets.