美国艾伦脑科学研究所Julie A. Harris研究组最新研究揭示了皮层和丘脑连接的层次结构。 10月30日，《自然》在线发表了这一成果。
研究人员扩展了艾伦小鼠脑连接性图谱库，其中包括大约一千个在皮质及其主要卫星结构丘脑中的新示踪实验。研究人员使用Cre表达系统（表达Cre重组酶的小鼠）按投射神经元的层和类别全面选择性地标记大脑范围的连接。通过观察轴突的终止模式，研究人员得出了一组广义的解剖学规则，用来描述皮层皮质、丘脑皮质和皮层丘脑投射。
研究人员还建立了一个模型来分配区域之间前馈或反馈的连接模式，该模型还可预测单个皮层和丘脑区域以及皮层网络模块的层次位置。这项研究结果表明，特定细胞类的连接在小鼠皮质脑网络内的层次结构较浅。
据悉，哺乳动物皮质是一种层状结构，包含许多区域和细胞类型，这些区域和细胞类型以复杂的方式紧密地连接，但其连接原理仍是未知。
附：英文原文
Title: Hierarchical organization of cortical and thalamic connectivity
Author: Julie A. Harris, Stefan Mihalas, Karla E. Hirokawa, Jennifer D. Whitesell, Hannah Choi, Amy Bernard, Phillip Bohn, Shiella Caldejon, Linzy Casal, Andrew Cho, Aaron Feiner, David Feng, Nathalie Gaudreault, Charles R. Gerfen, Nile Graddis, Peter A. Groblewski, Alex M. Henry, Anh Ho, Robert Howard, Joseph E. Knox, Leonard Kuan, Xiuli Kuang, Jerome Lecoq, Phil Lesnar, Yaoyao Li, Jennifer Luviano, Stephen McConoughey, Marty T. Mortrud, Maitham Naeemi, Lydia Ng, Seung Wook Oh, Benjamin Ouellette, Elise Shen, Staci A. Sorensen, Wayne Wakeman, Quanxin Wang, Yun Wang, Ali Williford, John W. Phillips, Allan R. Jones, Christof Koch, Hongkui Zeng
Issue&Volume: 2019-10-30
Abstract: The mammalian cortex is a laminar structure containing many areas and cell types that are densely interconnected in complex ways, and for which generalizable principles of organization remain mostly unknown. Here we describe a major expansion of the Allen Mouse Brain Connectivity Atlas resource1, involving around a thousand new tracer experiments in the cortex and its main satellite structure, the thalamus. We used Cre driver lines (mice expressing Cre recombinase) to comprehensively and selectively label brain-wide connections by layer and class of projection neuron. Through observations of axon termination patterns, we have derived a set of generalized anatomical rules to describe corticocortical, thalamocortical and corticothalamic projections. We have built a model to assign connection patterns between areas as either feedforward or feedback, and generated testable predictions of hierarchical positions for individual cortical and thalamic areas and for cortical network modules. Our results show that cell-class-specific connections are organized in a shallow hierarchy within the mouse corticothalamic network. Using mouse lines in which subsets of neurons are genetically labelled, the authors provide generalized anatomical rules for connections within and between the cortex and thalamus.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1716-z
Source:https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1716-z
Nature：《自然》，创刊于1869年。隶属于施普林格·自然出版集团，最新IF：69.504
官方网址：http://www.nature.com/
投稿链接：http://www.nature.com/authors/submit_manuscript.html
本期文章：《自然》：Online/在线发表
