Mouse

This funding announcement, issued by the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative, seeks transformative, cutting-edge, and innovative research that embraces new technologies, ideas, and approaches to understand brain circuit function and contributions to behavior. It is a component of the BRAIN Initiative Connectivity Across Scales (BRAIN CONNECTS) Program, which aims to lay the scientific foundation for the next generation of neural circuit-based approaches for preventing and treating devastating brain disorders. This Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOF

Functional connectomics reveals general wiring rule in mouse visual cortex

Disentangling independent latent components from neural data is a desirable goal in neuroscience. Independent component analysis (ICA) has been used to identify disentangled latent neural trajectories and their corresponding sub-brain maps from recorded imaging sequences. However, enforcing full independence between all latent components may be overly restrictive, as each independent neural trajectory and sub-brain map results in a rank-1 imaging sequence. Additionally, the connectivity inferred from a rank-1 sub-brain map produces a rank-1 connectivity matrix, which may lack expressiveness. T

The nervous system scales with animal size, maintaining function while minimizing wire. In contrast to most animal organs, which scale through the proliferation of dividing cells of similar size, brains expand by modulating the size of non-dividing neuronal cells to innervate space during development. As a result, there is notable diversity in neuronal size and structure within individual brains and between different species. This diversity raises an important question: how do neurons maintain computational function across diverse sizes while minimizing wiring costs? Two theoretical results ha

The habenula (Hb) is a diencephalic brain region implicated in adaptive behaviors and neuropsychiatric disorders. Two main Hb subdivisions, the lateral habenula and medial habenula, have been shown to play different roles in diverse behaviors, ranging from classical and operant learning to the prediction of outcomes, fear, addiction, and social interactions. However, our understanding of cytoarchitecture and topography of the vertebrate Hb, as well as how different Hb microcircuits are organized across species, remains limited. In this study, we utilized a combination of single-cell and spatia

The anterior insula cortex (AIC) and claustrum (CLA ) are two closely related brain regions. AIC is thought to integrate visceral information, suggesting it plays a role in interoceptive inference, thereby providing a possible neural mechanism for consciousness. Studies on CLA indicate that it is a cortical hub for orchestrating inter-areal communication. Because of the strong interaction between CLA and AIC, combined they could play a role in consciousness. Here we have undertaken to compare our findings in macaque with those in rodent. Retrograde tracers were injected in macaque brain AIC an

…we developed a 230,000-neuron model of mouse primary visual cortex (area V1). The model integrates a broad array of experimental data:Distribution and morpho-electric properties of different neuron types in V1.

…the direction-selective circuit in the mouse retina.

Empathy plays a critical role in social interactions, and many species, including rodents, display evolutionarily conserved behavioral antecedents of empathy. In both humans and rodents, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) encodes information about the affective state of others. However, little is known about which downstream targets of the ACC contribute to empathy behaviors. We optimized a protocol for the social transfer of pain behavior in mice and compared the ACC-dependent neural circuitry responsible for this behavior with the neural circuitry required for the social transfer of two rel

To understand the function of the brain and how its dysfunction leads to brain diseases, it is essential to have a deep understanding of the cell type composition of the brain, how the cell types are connected with each other and what their roles are in circuit function. At the Allen Institute, we have built multiple platforms, including single-cell transcriptomics, single and multi-patching electrophysiology, 3D reconstruction of neuronal morphology, high throughput brain-wide connectivity mapping, and large-scale neuronal activity imaging, to characterize the transcriptomic, physiological, m

…to hundreds of thousands of trials of mouse choice data. Our analysis reveals that mice don’t lapse. Instead, mice switch back and forth between engaged and disengaged behavior within a single session, and each mode of behavior lasts tens to hundreds of trials.

…vocal interaction in Alston’s singing mouse (Scotinomys teguina) – a neotropical rodent native to

During the course of evolution, a species’ environment shapes its sensory abilities, as individuals with more optimized sensory abilities are more likely survive and procreate. Adaptations to the statistics of the natural environment can be observed along the early visual pathway and across species. Therefore, characterising the properties of natural environments and studying the representation of natural scenes along the visual pathway is crucial for advancing our understanding of the structure and function of the visual system. In the past 20 years, mice have become an important model in vis