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Animal behaviour arises from computations in neuronal circuits, but our understanding of these computations has been frustrated by the lack of detailed synaptic connection maps, or connectomes. For example, despite intensive investigations over half a century, the neuronal implementation of local motion detection in the insect visual system remains elusive. Here we develop a semi-automated pipeline using electron microscopy to reconstruct a connectome, containing 379 neurons and 8,637 chemical synaptic contacts, within the Drosophila optic medulla. By matching reconstructed neurons to examples from light microscopy, we assigned neurons to cell types and assembled a connectome of the repeating module of the medulla. Within this module, we identified cell types constituting a motion detection circuit, and showed that the connections onto individual motion-sensitive neurons in this circuit were consistent with their direction selectivity. Our results identify cellular targets for future functional investigations, and demonstrate that connectomes can provide key insights into neuronal computations.
Pubmed ID: 23925240 RIS Download
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View all literature mentionsAn ImageJ plugin for morphological data mining, three-dimensional modeling and image stitching, registration, editing and annotation. Two independent modalities exist: either XML-based projects, working directly with the file system, or database-based projects, working on top of a local or remote PostgreSQL database. What can you do with it? * Semantic segmentation editor: order segmentations in tree hierarchies, whose template is exportable for reuse in other, comparable projects. * Model, visualize and export 3D. * Work from your laptop on your huge, remote image storage. * Work with an endless number of images, limited only by the hard drive capacity. Dozens of formats supported thanks to LOCI Bioformats and ImageJ. * Import stacks and even entire grids (montages) of images, automatically stitch them together and homogenize their histograms for best montaging quality. * Add layers conveniently. A layer represents, for example, one 50 nm section (for TEM) or a confocal section. Each layer has its own Z coordinate and thickness, and contains images, labels, areas, nodes of 3d skeletons, profiles... * Insert layer sets into layers: so your electron microscopy serial sections can live inside your optical microscopy sections. * Run any ImageJ plugin on any image. * Measure everything: areas, volumes, pixel intensities, etc. using both built-in data structures and segmentation types, and standard ImageJ ROIs. And with double dissectors! * Visualize RGB color channels changing the opacity of each on the fly, non-destructively. * Annotate images non-destructively with floating text labels, which you can rotate/scale on the fly and display in any color. * Montage/register/stitch/blend images manually with transparencies, semiautomatically, or fully automatically within and across sections, with translation, rigid, similarity and affine models with automatically extracted SIFT features. * Correct the lens distortion present in the images, like those generated in transmission electron microscopy. * Add alpha masks to images using ROIs, for example to split images in two or more parts, or to remove the borders of an image or collection of images. * Model neuronal arbors with 3D skeletons (with areas or radiuses), and synapses with connectors. * Undo all steps. And much more...
View all literature mentionsDrosophila melanogaster with name Oregon-R(R) from DGGR.
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