Synaptic counts approximate synaptic contact area in Drosophila.
Publication Date
2022Journal Title
PLoS One
ISSN
1932-6203
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Volume
17
Issue
4
Language
en
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Barnes, C. L., Bonnéry, D., & Cardona, A. (2022). Synaptic counts approximate synaptic contact area in Drosophila.. PLoS One, 17 (4) https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266064
Description
Funder: Howard Hughes Medical Institute; funder-id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000011
Abstract
The pattern of synaptic connections among neurons defines the circuit structure, which constrains the computations that a circuit can perform. The strength of synaptic connections is costly to measure yet important for accurate circuit modeling. Synaptic surface area has been shown to correlate with synaptic strength, yet in the emerging field of connectomics, most studies rely instead on the counts of synaptic contacts between two neurons. Here we quantified the relationship between synaptic count and synaptic area as measured from volume electron microscopy of the larval Drosophila central nervous system. We found that the total synaptic surface area, summed across all synaptic contacts from one presynaptic neuron to a postsynaptic one, can be accurately predicted solely from the number of synaptic contacts, for a variety of neurotransmitters. Our findings support the use of synaptic counts for approximating synaptic strength when modeling neural circuits.
Keywords
Research Article, Biology and life sciences, Medicine and health sciences, Research and analysis methods
Identifiers
pone-d-21-37427
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266064
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/335743
Rights
Licence:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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