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Authors & Affiliations
Antoine Legare, Mado Lemieux, Vincent Boily, Sandrine Poulin, Arthur Legare, Patrick Desrosiers, Paul De Koninck
Abstract
Understanding the structural and functional network architectures of nervous systems has been
a key focus of neuroscience. Many features of brain-wide neuronal networks have been identified in mammals
using noninvasive methods that lack cellular information. Here, we performed whole-brain calcium imaging
in zebrafish larvae to investigate the structural and genetic basis of functional connectivity (FC) at single-cell
resolution. Neural activity from $\sim$50,000 neurons was recorded in head-restrained transgenic larvae expressing
a pan-neuronal calcium sensor, while monitoring their tail movements. From the regional calcium dynamics,
we computed mesoscopic FC, revealing a conserved functional architecture across individuals. Despite this
consistency, each larva displayed a distinct FC signature, allowing individual identification across imaging
sessions on consecutive days. To characterize the structure-function relationship of brain networks, we used over
4,000 reconstructed neurons to derive inter-regional structural connectivity (SC). A strong correlation between
SC and FC was observed, with polysynaptic pathways explaining much of FC. We identified structural network
modules that significantly constrained the shape of both spontaneous and visually evoked regional coactivation
patterns across individuals. Mapping stimulus- and motor-correlated neurons revealed a gradual organization
of visuomotor populations along the anteroposterior axis, predicted by a network diffusion gradient in both
spontaneous FC and SC. Additionally, we used spatially resolved gene expression profiles to identify a subset
of genes whose region-specific co-expression levels significantly predicted FC. Our findings demonstrate that
key principles of brain network organization established in mammalian systems can be observed at cellular
resolution in zebrafish, highlighting its value as a vertebrate model for studying brain networks across scales.