Topic: postnatal development

The function of the cerebral cortex relies on the cellular balance between excitatory (pyramidal cells) and inhibitory neurons (interneurons), which is disrupted in disorders such as autism or schizophrenia. The emergence of cortical function during postnatal development relies on spontaneous synchronous activity among large groups of pyramidal cells and interneurons, which later desynchronise for efficient information processing. Before this network activity shift, interneuron numbers are adjusted through activity-dependent programmed cell death mechanisms. However, the extent to which the ad

Choline Acetyltransferase (ChAT) serves as a reliable marker for motoneurons, including those within the oculomotor (OCM) system located in the brainstem. Although ChAT activity increases in spinal cord motoneurons during postnatal development, the evolving expression profile of this enzyme within the OCM system across various life stages remains unexplored. Previous investigations have indicated an elevation in nerve growth factor (NGF) expression in the spinal cord during postnatal development, mirroring ChAT patterns. Ocular motoneurons exhibit a distinct dependence on NGF due to the consti

Neural circuits in the spinal cord are composed of diverse sets of interneurons that play a crucial role in shaping motor output. Despite progress in revealing the cellular architecture of the spinal cord, the extent of cell type heterogeneity within cardinal interneuron classes remains unclear, hindering our understanding of the organization of the spinal motor infrastructure. Through a focus on a single cardinal class of spinal interneurons, here we present a comprehensive atlas of V1 interneuron diversity across postnatal development using single-nucleus transcriptomics. We find that cell-t