Spontaneous and evoked synaptic rewiring in the neonatal neocortex

The local microcircuitry of the neocortex is structurally a tabula rasa, with the axon of each pyramidal neuron having numerous submicrometer appositions with the dendrites of all neighboring pyramidal neurons, but is functionally highly selective, with synapses formed onto only a small proportion of these targets. This design leaves a vast potential for the microcircuit to rewire without extensive axonal or dendritic growth. To examine whether rewiring does take place, we used multineuron patch-clamp recordings on 12- to 14-day-old rat neocortical slices and studied long-term changes in synaptic connectivity within clusters of neurons. We found pyramidal neurons spontaneously connecting and disconnecting from each other and that exciting the slice with glutamate greatly increases the number of new connections established. Evoked emergence of new synaptic connections requires action potential activity and activation of metabotropic glutamate receptor 5, but not NMDA receptor or group II or group III metabotropic glutamate receptor activation. We also found that it is the weaker connections that are selectively eliminated. These results provide direct evidence for spontaneous and evoked rewiring of the neocortical microcircuitry involving entire functional multisynaptic connections. We speculate that this form of microcircuit plasticity enables an evolution of the microcircuit connectivity by natural selection as a function of experience.

Structure and dynamics of the neocortical microcircuit connectivity

Jean-Vincent Le Bé

The neocortex is the most computationally advanced portion of the brain. It is currently assumed to be composed of a large number of "cortical columns" – intricate arrangements of cortical neurons approximately 300-500 µm in diameter and 2-5 mm in height in humans – that might serve as the elementary computational unit of the neocortex. Understanding the computation performed by this microcircuit is one of the keys to our comprehension of the brain. The so-called cortical column is not a static entity, however, and it evolves throughout a lifetime and continually adapts to the information from its cortical environment. Despite the differences between cortical columns across the cortex, a number of common features have been identified: a laminar structure, the dynamics of connections between identified neurons or the mechanisms for these connections to be modified (that give its specificity to each microcircuit). This thesis presents the description of the differential connectivity and synaptic dynamics across cell populations and the long term neuronal rewiring in a particular neuronal population within the cortical column. Somatic whole cell recordings have been performed to probe the connectivity, synaptic dynamics and plasticity of the connections in the rat neocortex. Two populations of layer V pyramidal neurons were studied in particular: cortico-callosally projecting pyramidal cells (CCPs) and thick tufted pyramidal cells (TTCs). The first major results from this work revealed the degree of connectivity and the linear dynamics of the CCPs population when compared to the TTCs. CCPs have nearly 4 times fewer interconnections and subsequent post-synaptic potentials were less decreasing in amplitude along a pre-synaptic series of action potentials. Long term configuration of TTC networks was explored. These experiments show for the first time the emergence of new functional synaptic connections between TTCs within hours. Activation of the slice by glutamate greatly increases their rate of emergence and this work demonstrated that metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGluR5) activation and action potential firing are required for new connections to be formed in this experimental protocol. Newly formed connections respond in a more linear fashion and have weaker post-synaptic influence than already existing connections. Pre-existing connections are also modified after stimulation, requiring mGluR5, action potentials as well as α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazole-propionic acid (AMPA) and N-methyl-D-aspartic acid (NMDA) receptors activation. The activation of group III metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs) however results in a decrease in the strength of connections. Finally, the influence of inhibitory interneurons on the activity and connectivity between TTCs was also investigated. The results of this study show that firing of inhibitory interneurons can be triggered by the input of only one pyramidal cell. They further show that stimulation of a single TTC can result in an hyperpolarization of the post-synaptic TTC mediated by an interneurone. When the pre-synaptic neuron is also directly connected to the post-synaptic neuron with an excitatory synapse, the indirect inhibitory connection serves to curtail the excitatory response. This work has provided a new insight into the dynamic nature of the cortical microcircuitry, showing that it evolves rapidly and can adapt, reconfigure and rewire itself in remarkably short time-spans. It also describes the variety of dynamics exhibited by the different types of pyramidal cells, due to either the projecting site specificity or to the action of an intermediate interneuron.

EPFL2007

Emergent Properties of in silico Synaptic Transmission in a Model of the Rat Neocortical Column

Srikanth Ramaswamy

The cerebral cortex occupies nearly 80% of the entire volume of the mammalian brain and is thought to subserve higher cognitive functions like memory, attention and sensory perception. The neocortex is the newest part in the evolution of the cerebral cortex and is perhaps the most intricate brain region ever studied. The neocortical microcircuit is the smallest Œecosystem‚ of the neocortex that consists of a rich assortment of neurons, which are diverse in both their morphological and electrical properties. In the neocortical microcircuit, neurons are horizontally arranged in 6 distinct sheets called layers. The fundamental operating unit of the neocortical microcircuit is believed to be the Neocortical Column (NCC). Functionally, a single NCC is an arrangement of thousands of neurons in a vertical fashion spanning across all the 6 layers. The structure of the entire neocortex arises from a repeated and stereotypical arrangement of several thousands of such columns, where neurons transmit information to each other through specialized points of information transfer called synapses. The dynamics of synaptic transmission can be as diverse as the neurons defining a connection and are crucial to foster the functional properties of the neocortical microcircuit. The Blue Brain Project (BBP) is the first comprehensive endeavour to build a unifying model of the NCC by systematic data integration and biologically detailed simulations. Through the past 5 years, the BBP has built a facility for a data-constraint driven approach towards modelling and integrating biological information across multiple levels of complexity. Guided by fundamental principles derived from biological experiments, the BBP simulation toolchain has undergone a process of continuous refinement to facilitate the frequent construction of detailed in silico models of the NCC. The focus of this thesis lies in characterizing the functional properties of in silico synaptic transmission by incorporating principles of synaptic communication derived through biological experiments. In order to study in silico synaptic transmission it is crucial to gain an understanding of the key players influencing the manner in which synaptic signals are processed in the neocortical microcircuit - ion channel kinetics and distribution profiles, single neuron models and dynamics of synaptic pathways. First, by means of exhaustive literature survey, I identified ion channel kinetics and their distribution profiles on neocortical neurons to build in silico ion channel models. Thereafter, I developed a prototype framework to analyze the somatic and dendritic features of single neuron models constrained by ion channel kinetics. Finally, within a simulation framework integrating the ion channels, single neuron models and dynamics of synaptic transmission, I replicated in vitro experimental protocols in silico, to characterize the transmission properties of monosynaptic connections. These synaptic connections, arising from the axo-dendritric apposition of neuronal arbours were sampled across many instances of in silico NCC models constructed a priori through the BBP simulation toolchain. In this thesis, I show that when principles of synaptic transmission derived from in vitro experiments are incorporated to model in silico synaptic connections, the resulting anatomy and physiology of synaptic connections modelled from elementary biological rules closely match in vitro data. This thesis work demonstrates that the average synaptic response properties in silico are robust to perturbations in the anatomical and physiological properties of modelled connections in the local neocortical microcircuit. A fundamental discovery through this thesis is an insight into the function of the local neocortical microcircuit by examining the effect of morphological diversity on in silico synaptic transmission. I demonstrate here that intrinsic morphological diversity confers an invariance to the average synaptic response properties in silico in the local neocortical microcircuit, termed "microcircuit level robustness and invariance".

EPFL2011

High Bandwidth Synaptic Communication and Frequency Tracking in Human Neocortex

Michele Giugliano

Neuronal firing, synaptic transmission, and its plasticity form the building blocks for processing and storage of information in the brain. It is unknown whether adult human synapses are more efficient in transferring information between neurons than rodent synapses. To test this, we recorded from connected pairs of pyramidal neurons in acute brain slices of adult human and mouse temporal cortex and probed the dynamical properties of use-dependent plasticity. We found that human synaptic connections were purely depressing and that they recovered three to four times more swiftly from depression than synapses in rodent neocortex. Thereby, during realistic spike trains, the temporal resolution of synaptic information exchange in human synapses substantially surpasses that in mice. Using information theory, we calculate that information transfer between human pyramidal neurons exceeds that of mouse pyramidal neurons by four to nine times, well into the beta and gamma frequency range. In addition, we found that human principal cells tracked fine temporal features, conveyed in received synaptic inputs, at a wider bandwidth than for rodents. Action potential firing probability was reliably phase-locked to input transients up to 1,000 cycles/s because of a steep onset of action potentials in human pyramidal neurons during spike trains, unlike in rodent neurons. Our data show that, in contrast to the widely held views of limited information transfer in rodent depressing synapses, fast recovering synapses of human neurons can actually transfer substantial amounts of information during spike trains. In addition, human pyramidal neurons are equipped to encode high synaptic information content. Thus, adult human cortical microcircuits relay information at a wider bandwidth than rodent microcircuits.