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In vivo imaging of functional plasticity in the mammalian brain

Final Report Summary - BRAINPLASTICITY (In vivo imaging of functional plasticity in the mammalian brain)

The BrainPlasticity project focused on developing tools to image single neurons and populations of neurons in the intact brain and applying these methods to study developing and mature cells.
Our studies imaging adult born neurons in the olfactory bulb revealed several novel findings about this population. First, we directly imaged neuronal turnover in the OB and provided quantitative estimates of this phenomenon as well as new observations of its nature (Adam and Mizrahi, 2011). We found that synaptic turnover of adult born neurons is particularly strong in new mothers (Kople et al 2012). Finally, we challenged the dogma that adult born neurons are important only in young age age. We show that mature adult born neurons are also central (Livneh and Mizrahi, 2012).
In the OB we also pioneered a collaborative effort to study a highly sparse neuronal population using both anatomy and behavior. This revealed a a new and surprising role a very small populations of enurons in the OB in coding olfactory information (Miyamichi et al. 2013).
In audition, we pioneered the usage of two photon calcium imaging using synthetic dyes and revealed the microarchitecture of the cortical circuit. In addition, we used electrophysiology in the context of a natural plasticity event (motherhood) and found a novel multisensory interaction between sounds and smell in the cortex of new mothers. This change in the brain may enhance the bonding between mothers and their offsprings (Cohen et al. 2011).
Finally, we developed a new technique to record from the neuron in the brain twice. This method can be generally useful for experiments of long term cortical plasticity (Cohen et al. 2013)