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Content archived on 2024-06-18

Imaging dendrites across wake and sleep: fiberoptic measurements of calcium activity in freely behaving animals

Objective

The aim of this project is to look at changes in dendritic calcium activity during sleep and how these changes are influenced by waking experience in freely behaving animals. Sleep promotes brain plasticity and processes dependent upon plasticity (i.e. memory consolidation). But the cellular events that mediate these effects are poorly understood. We hypothesize that sleep promotes brain plasticity by increasing synaptic activity locally. We will test this hypothesis by looking at changes in in vivo dendritic calcium transients during sleep (Aim1) and sleep-dependent cortical plasticity (Aim2) in freely behaving animals. This will be achieved by combining EEG/EMG polysomnography recording and fiberoptic imaging techniques. More specifically, we will look at changes in calcium activity from the apical tuft dendrite of layer 5 pyramidal neurons. Dendrites are the main site of information processing and integration therefore changes observe over the sleep-wake cycle will contribute to a better understanding of synaptic function in the intact brain (Aim1). Changes in dendritic calcium levels are also directly linked to neuronal activity and can predict the polarity of plastic changes (e.g. synaptic potentiation vs. depression). Therefore, we expect that challenging the brain during wakefulness will modify dendritic activity during subsequent sleep. To test this hypothesis, we will quantify dendritic calcium activity during sleep following 2 different experience-dependent plasticity paradigms leading to either potentiation (enriched environment) or depression (monocular deprivation) in primary visual cortex (Aim2). The proposed research would be the first to assess directly the effect of sleep, experience-dependent plasticity and sleep-dependent plasticity on in vivo dendritic calcium activity in freely behaving animal.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Topic(s)

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Call for proposal

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FP7-PEOPLE-2010-RG
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Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

MC-IRG - International Re-integration Grants (IRG)

Coordinator

HUMBOLDT-UNIVERSITAET ZU BERLIN
EU contribution
€ 100 000,00
Address
UNTER DEN LINDEN 6
10117 Berlin
Germany

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Region
Berlin Berlin Berlin
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

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