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Out of curiosity, what imaging modality(or modalities) are you using? From your remark it appears that you're working at a very fine level and I'm unfamiliar w

Out of curiosity, what imaging modality(or modalities) are you using? From your remark it appears that you're working at a very fine level and I'm unfamiliar with the techniques used at the scale (although I have heard mumblings about optogenetics from time to time).

SapphireSun 10y ago
My lab is one of the reconstruction specialists. We're using electron microscopy (as referenced in the Wired article) to map the ultrastructure of the tissues. I've seen datasets with XY plane (the EM scanning plane) voxels as small as 5nm x 5nm and Z resolution as small as 23nm (though not on the same datasets). Other labs at different phases of the pipeline are working with various kinds of physiological indicators including taking movies of GCaMP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCaMP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCaMP) (a calcium activity indicator) expressing neurons under various behavioral conditions. A glut of calcium ions provide evidence for recent firing of a neuron as calcium is involved in triggering the release of neurotransmitters. If you're interested in methods, here's a paper describing a dataset we focused pretty heavily on (that's not related to the consortium dataset, but paved the way with developing techniques): Briggman, et al. "Wiring specificity in the direction-selectivity circuit of the retina" (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v471/n7337/full/nature09818.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v471/n7337/full/nature0...) We later did some science with it ;) JS Kim, et al. "Space–time wiring specificity supports direction selectivity in the retina" http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v509/n7500/full/nature13240.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v509/n7500/full/nature1... The pipeline has evolved considerably since those papers came out. We're living in exciting times. :)

SapphireSun 10y ago

My lab is one of the reconstruction specialists. We're using electron microscopy (as referenced in the Wired article) to map the ultrastructure of the tissues. I've seen datasets with XY plane (the EM scanning plane) voxels as small as 5nm x 5nm and Z resolution as small as 23nm (though not on the same datasets). Other labs at different phases of the pipeline are working with various kinds of physiological indicators including taking movies of GCaMP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCaMP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCaMP) (a calcium activity indicator) expressing neurons under various behavioral conditions. A glut of calcium ions provide evidence for recent firing of a neuron as calcium is involved in triggering the release of neurotransmitters. If you're interested in methods, here's a paper describing a dataset we focused pretty heavily on (that's not related to the consortium dataset, but paved the way with developing techniques): Briggman, et al. "Wiring specificity in the direction-selectivity circuit of the retina" (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v471/n7337/full/nature09818.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v471/n7337/full/nature0...) We later did some science with it ;) JS Kim, et al. "Space–time wiring specificity supports direction selectivity in the retina" http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v509/n7500/full/nature13240.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v509/n7500/full/nature1... The pipeline has evolved considerably since those papers came out. We're living in exciting times. :)