Synapse-level reconstruction of visual circuitry
My current project is to read off a portion of the wiring diagram of the mammalian visual system, using transmission electron microscopy of serial thin (50nm) sections of brain. This technique provides synapse-level resolution of neuronal relations.
I hope to reconstruct a large enough volume of brain, at high enough resolution, that I will be able to correlate the observed wiring diagram with the well-known functional properties of the circuit under examination. I believe this approach may teach us something new about the organization of the mammalian brain.
The required volumes are larger than have been imaged and analyzed in the past. I am participating in the development of several technologies to facilitate this image acquisition and analysis. I think that once these techniques for large-scale EM reconstruction become standardized, many areas of neuroscience will benefit.
A little bit of data gives a sense.
| My sometime blog | page last modified 2/23/2009 |