Grant: Project Grant

Solving brain disorders requires knowledge of the molecular components of its cells, their architecture and spatial dynamics and their interactions inside subcellular compartments. The scale of molecular components (e.g. nanometers) inside cells has however precluded scientists from observing them in their proper native, live context. We and others have developed methods, called super-resolution optical methods, which we propose to use to study synaptic signaling and remodeling in brain tissue. However, in order to exploit these optical methods rigorously and quantitatively, we have had to develop machine-learning based approaches to i) assist the microscopes and provide them with adaptive features and to ii) analyze the images. In using these combined approaches we have made unpresented discoveries on intracellular structures of neurons. Our proposed experiments aim to further understand these structures and learn how they affect the capacity of nerve cells to support learning and memory, in health and disease.