Unwiring the Brain: Structural Neurobiology, the New and Old Bottleneck, by Winfried Denk

Dr. Winfried Denk spoke at SFN2011 in Washington DC at 1:00pm on Sunday, 13 November, 2011

Unwiring the Brain: Structural Neurobiology, the New and Old Bottleneck

Newly developed and refined large-scale 3D electron microscopy methods, such as serial block-face imaging, together with novel visualization and analysis methods allow neural circuits to be reconstructed in increasing detail and scope. Prior 2-photon calcium imaging of the tissue can put the reconstructed circuits in a functional context. An example is the discovery of the specific connectivity between starburst-cell dendrites and direction-selective ganglion cells in the retina. Truly connectomic reconstructions will need further advances in automated image analysis.

Dr. Denk's talk is a Special Lecture at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, which brings together around 35,000 neuroscientists each year. Denk has been a pioneer in the field of connectomics, applying methods that he describes as structural neurobiology, i.e. identifying the specific fiber connectivity of the brain's neuronal network at high resolution (e.g. 5 nm). His work is in the same domain and has many similarities with that of our resident whole brain emulation project pioneer, Dr. Kenneth Hayworth (ATLUM, Tape-to-SEM). Denk recently co-authored a landmark paper in Nature that is also a featured reference here on carboncopies.org, Briggman, K.L., Helmstaedter, M., and Denk, W. (2011). Wiring Specificity in the Direction-Selectivity circuit of the retina, Nature, Vol.471, 183-188: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v471/n7337/full/nature09818.html.