921 research outputs found
The Morphological Identity of Insect Dendrites
Dendrite morphology, a neuron's anatomical fingerprint, is a
neuroscientist's asset in unveiling organizational principles in the
brain. However, the genetic program encoding the morphological identity of a
single dendrite remains a mystery. In order to obtain a formal understanding of
dendritic branching, we studied distributions of morphological parameters in a
group of four individually identifiable neurons of the fly visual system. We
found that parameters relating to the branching topology were similar throughout
all cells. Only parameters relating to the area covered by the dendrite were
cell type specific. With these areas, artificial dendrites were grown based on
optimization principles minimizing the amount of wiring and maximizing synaptic
democracy. Although the same branching rule was used for all cells, this yielded
dendritic structures virtually indistinguishable from their real counterparts.
From these principles we derived a fully-automated model-based neuron
reconstruction procedure validating the artificial branching rule. In
conclusion, we suggest that the genetic program implementing neuronal branching
could be constant in all cells whereas the one responsible for the dendrite
spanning field should be cell specific
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