TRACKING AND PERTURBING THE DEVELOPMENT OF SINGLE NEURONS USING TARGETED OPTOGENETICS

Development of a nervous system is a dynamic process unique to the ontogeny of each individual organism, generating phenotypic diversity in the adult population. A proper understanding of neurodevelopmental dynamics has so far been limited by the experimental difficulty of tracking the same neurons of the same individual across days. We have recently developed experimental and image processing methods that allowed us to overcome this limitation, providing us with a more detailed understanding of the dynamic processes uderlying early postnatal development of neural activity in mouse barrel cortex. The tracked neurons showed an increase in firing rates, a decorrelation of their activity patterns and the onset of modulation by behavioural state throughout the second postnatal week. We are currently combining this protocol with longitudinal targetted optogenetic stimulation to investigate activity-dependent developmental plasticity mechanisms. Our work combining tracking and perturbations of developmental trajectories should provide a path towards a understanding of the dynamics of neurodevelopment at the level of individual subjects, giving insights into the developmental origins of neurodiversity observed in adulthood.