In the visual system, peripheral processing circuits are often tuned to specific stimulus features. How this selectivity arises and how these circuits are organized to inform specific visual behaviors is incompletely understood. Using forward genetics and quantitative behavioral studies, we uncover an input channel to motion detecting circuitry in Drosophila. The second-order neuron L3 acts com...

Cross-synaptic synchrony--correlations in transmitter release across output synapses of a single neuron--is a key determinant of how signal and noise traverse neural circuits. The anatomical connectivity between rod bipolar and A17 amacrine cells in the mammalian retina, specifically that neighboring A17s often receive input from many of the same rod bipolar cells, provides a rare technical opp...

We report the breaking of the diffraction resolution barrier in far-field fluorescence microscopy by transiently shelving the fluorophore in a metastable dark state. Using a relatively modest light intensity of several kW/cm(2) in a focal distribution featuring a local zero, we confine the fluorescence emission to a spot whose diameter is a fraction of the wavelength of light. Nanoscale far-fie...

Many physiological events require an accurate timing signal, usually generated by neural networks called central pattern generators (CPGs). On the other hand, properties of neurons and neural networks (e.g. time constants of neurons and weights of network connections) alter with time, resulting in gradual changes in timing of such networks. Recently, a synaptic weight adjustment mechanism has b...

Beta-Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (βCaMKII) is known as a powerful regulator of lateral habenula neuron function and key molecular determinant depression. βCaMKII also abundant in the hippocampus, especially dentate gyrus (DG). However, whether DG involved emotional behaviors remains unknown. In this study, using βCaMKII-F90G transgenic mice, which overexpression restr...

Objective(s): Cell therapy has provided clinical applications to the treatment of motor neuron diseases. The current obstacle in stem cell therapy is to direct differentiation of stem cells into neurons in the neurodegenerative disorders. Biomaterial scaffolds can improve cell differentiation and are widely used in translational medicine and tissue engineering. The aim...

(1) The neuron R15 in the parietovisceral ganglion of Aplysia has a circadian rhythm of spiking activity when recorded in the isolated ganglion. The rhythm is entrained in vivo by light-dark cycles. (2) The phase of the R15 rhythm is a function not only of the entraining light schedule, but also of the time of dissection. Changes in the dissection time during the light portion of the light-dark...

[no abstract available]

Many physiological events require an accurate timing signal, usually generated by neural networks called central pattern generators (CPGs). On the other hand, properties of neurons and neural networks (e.g. time constants of neurons and weights of network connections) alter with time, resulting in gradual changes in timing of such networks. Recently, a synaptic weight adjustment mechanism has b...

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a genetic disorder which affect nervous system and is characterized with progressive distal motor neuron weakness. The survival motor neuron (SMN) protein level reduces in patients with SMA. Two different genes code survival motor neuron protein in human genome. Skeletal and intercostal muscles denervation lead to weakness, hypotony, hyporeflexia, respiratory fa...