Genomics ePosters

Ongoing neural activity fluctuates over a broad range of timescales. Variations in intrinsic timescales across the forebrain relate to the functional specialization of cortical areas along the visual hierarchy [1, 2]. Furthermore, these timescales adapt to task demands, for example, during selective attention [3] and…

Background: The balance of excitation and inhibition (E-I) is a key functional property of cortical microcircuits [1] which changes through lifespan. Adolescence is considered a crucial period for the maturation of E-I balance [2,3]. This has been primarily observed in animal studies, and human in vivo evidence on…

SP4 gene is one of the two risk genes implicated in schizophrenia in recent large unpublished case-controlled genomic and exomic sequencing studies. Data on Spatio-temporal SP4 expression in the brain and it's biological functions are sparse in published literature. Bulk RNA sequencing and single-cell high-resolution…

OBJECTIVE: Alzheimer's disease (AD) stands as the prevalent neurodegenerative condition globally, characterized by symptoms such as memory loss, language difficulties, disorientation, diminished motivation, self-neglect, mood fluctuations, and behavioral challenges. Despite its widespread impact, the precise cellular…

Investigations of transcriptomic and neuroimaging data imply that the spatial patterning of the brain transcriptome follows broad spatial trends in the brain network architecture, which can be used to study the molecular mechanisms of functional connectivity. However, the sophisticated pre-processing and data fusion…

Octopuses are an emerging model organism in neurobiology due to their unique nervous system and capacity for intelligence. However, due to this novelty, nothing is currently known about many of their receptors, including those involved in neuromodulation. Given the historical significance of dopamine action in the…

Joint exploration of behavior, genes and brain structure holds the promise to provide a better understanding of neural circuits than unimodal data analyses. Several consortia provide extensive data resources of different modalities. However, analyses of heteromodal data require the expertise of computer scientists for…

The striking diversity of cells in the mammalian brain lies in stark contrast with the uniformity of cells in theoretical models and artificial networks. What computational advantage do these myriad cell types provide? Deciphering their roles first requires organizing cells in the appropriate manner. Typically, cells…

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) describes a diverse group of neurodevelopmental disorders encompassing a wide range of clinical impairments. The two core symptoms that define ASD are social communication impairments and restricted and repetitive behaviors, and there is a wide range of cognitive and language abilities.…

Inhibitory interneurons in cortex consist of many subtypes that differ in, e.g., connectivity and physiology. Recently, it was shown that —in layers 1-3 of mouse primary visual cortex— interneuron subtypes differ systematically in their modulation with an animal’s behavioural state, and that this state modulation can…

How does the organization of neural information processing enable humans’ sophisticated cognition? Here we decompose functional interactions between brain regions into synergistic and redundant components, revealing their distinct information-processing roles. Combining functional, structural, and diffusion-weighted…

Weighted Gene Co-expression Network Analysis (WGCNA) is a widely used bioinformatics method that defines gene clusters (modules) based on correlated expression levels, allowing users to study relationships between modules, define groups of genes subserving common biological functions, and compare network topologies…

Which genes contribute to making the human brain capable of language? We analyzed resting state fMRI and genetic single nucleotide polymorphism data of 30,660 people in the UK biobank and found 15 regions in the human DNA that relate to the brain language network. We link two genomic regions on chromosome 3 (EPHA3 and…

Transcriptomics has revealed the exquisite diversity of cortical inhibitory neurons, but it is not known whether these fine molecular subtypes have correspondingly diverse activity patterns in the living brain. Here, we show that inhibitory subtypes in primary visual cortex (V1) have diverse correlates with brain…

During brain development, billions of axons navigate over multiple spatial scales to reach specific targets, and so form functional circuits. However, the limited information capacity of the zygotic genome puts a strong constraint on how, and which, axonal routes can be encoded. We propose and validate a mechanism of…