Grant: Project Grant

Your typical computer is organized into different modules such as the central processor, memory, and input/output units. This, however, is not true for the brain. If you could open up a brain and look inside, you would mostly just find neurons and their connections. What the brain does is therefore achieved using only nerve cells and their synapses, which together form neural circuits. Knowing neural circuit structure thus means understanding brain function. Unfortunately, finding neural connections with today's methods is very slow, yielding maybe 5 a day. We therefore created a new light-based optical circuit mapping method -- optomapping -- that is ~100-fold faster. For the first time, we can thus optomap entire brain circuits in health and disease. First, we aim to compare two classic input and output areas -- visual cortex and motor cortex -- to see how their structures differ to determine their distinct functions. Next, we challenge our new method to explore brain circuits altered by neuropathology. Our approach will break new ground by clarifying how different brain regions are structured to operate correctly, but also how they are changed by diseases of the brain.