Unsupervised spike sorting for large-scale, high-density multielectrode arrays

electrophysiology; high-density multielectrode array; neural cultures; retina; spike sortin

Bridging the gap in connectomic studies: A particle filtering framework for estimating structural connectivity at network scale

The ultimate goal of neuroscience is understanding the brain at a functional level. This requires the investigation of the structural connectivity at multiple scales: from the single-neuron micro-connectomics to the brain-region macro-connectomics. In this work, we address the study of connectomics at the intermediate mesoscale, introducing a probabilistic approach capable of reconstructing complex topologies of large neuronal networks. Suitable directional features are designed to model the local neuritic architecture and a feature-based particle filtering framework is proposed which allows the spatial tracking of neurites on microscopy images. The experimental results on cultures of increasing complexity, grown on High-Density Micro Electrode Arrays, show good stability and performance as compared to ground truth annotations drawn by domain experts. We also show how the method can be used to dissect the structural connectivity of inhibitory and excitatory subnetworks opening new perspectives towards the investigation of functional interactions among multiple cellular populations

Structural and functional identification of sub-networks in dissociated neuronal cultures: an automated multimodal analysis combining high density MEA and fluorescence imaging

High density MEAs provides improved capabilities in spatially and temporally resolving network activity patterns at the resolution of single cell, becoming more and more a standard technology in unravelling neuronal signal processing. In combination with fluorescence imaging, these devices open new perspective in finely identify structural and functional network properties. In this paper we present an automated analysis able to correlate the network topology extracted from fluorescence imaging of specific sub populations (e.g. inhibitory neurons), with high density electrophysiological recordings, paving the way to finely correlate functional activity with morphological spatial composition of dissociated neuronal cultures