Functional connectivity in cortical microcircuits in vivo: visual cortex and beyond

January 25, 2013
2:30 p.m.

A complex interplay between molecular programmes of gene expression and environmental experience sculpts cortical circuits during postnatal development. However, to mechanistically understand how this happens we need to first understand how the cortical circuitry functions in the intact brain with a celltype specific resolution. The mammalian neocortex is indeed composed by morphologically and genetically distinct neuronal classes whose connectivity is layer- and cell-type specific.
In the seminar, we will explore how this organization impacts on sensory representation as well as on experience-dependent plasticity in vivo. Importantly, a primary sensory cortex, which by definition processes sensory information coming through a single sensory modality (e.g. auditory, tactile and visual), is not isolated from the rest of the brain. I will clarify how and through which circuitry activation of sensory modalities different from the dominant one affects microcircuits functioning in primary sensory cortices. A comparison of how multisensory interaction occurs in those cortical territories devoted to combine information from different senses (multisensory areas), reveals a form of inteareal inhibition between primary cortices that can be relevant for the animal behaviour. This cell-type specific interrogation of cortical microcircuits is nowadays rendered possible by a combination of in vivo patch clamp recordings, two-photon microscopy and optigenetics.