Examine the Role of Astrocytes in Cortical Circuits with Novel Spatio-Temporal Event Detection Package
Department
Biomedical Engineering
Faculty Advisor
James Schummers
Start Date
30-9-2020 1:00 PM
End Date
30-9-2020 2:00 PM
Abstract
Astrocytes have been taken as only a supportive glial cell in the brain not related to higher brain functions. Recent evidence suggests that astrocytic Calcium activity may influence cognition and visual stimulus processing. Tools for quantitative analysis of astrocyte calcium signaling are lacking. A recently developed algorithm package, AQuA (Astrocyte Quantitative Analysis) is capable of characterizing astrocyte calcium signals in the spatial and temporal planes simultaneously in an event-wise manner, which can help in understanding the physiology of these cells and the calcium signaling events within them. Calcium imaging of astrocytes has shown strong correlation between the astrocyte's activity and specifically designed visual input in ferrets. To assess astrocyte's activity in binocular mammals, we prepare ferrets with AAV virus that produces GCaMP, a substance that will emit fluorescence when Calcium concentration increases within the astrocyte. Two-photon microscopy is used to analyze single or multiple cells (astrocytes and neurons). The current goal of our team is to validate the process of event-based analysis of astrocytes. This will be done by establishing optimal parameters within AQuA that will allow us to process and delineate events within the cell to effectively analyze astrocytes in the visual cortex of ferrets. This research will advance the field of cortical circuits and vision processing and integration of stimuli. The future for the research will be to correlate astrocyte activity and the neurons' response to visual stimuli to assess its connection with cognition and integration processes.
File Type
Event
Examine the Role of Astrocytes in Cortical Circuits with Novel Spatio-Temporal Event Detection Package
Astrocytes have been taken as only a supportive glial cell in the brain not related to higher brain functions. Recent evidence suggests that astrocytic Calcium activity may influence cognition and visual stimulus processing. Tools for quantitative analysis of astrocyte calcium signaling are lacking. A recently developed algorithm package, AQuA (Astrocyte Quantitative Analysis) is capable of characterizing astrocyte calcium signals in the spatial and temporal planes simultaneously in an event-wise manner, which can help in understanding the physiology of these cells and the calcium signaling events within them. Calcium imaging of astrocytes has shown strong correlation between the astrocyte's activity and specifically designed visual input in ferrets. To assess astrocyte's activity in binocular mammals, we prepare ferrets with AAV virus that produces GCaMP, a substance that will emit fluorescence when Calcium concentration increases within the astrocyte. Two-photon microscopy is used to analyze single or multiple cells (astrocytes and neurons). The current goal of our team is to validate the process of event-based analysis of astrocytes. This will be done by establishing optimal parameters within AQuA that will allow us to process and delineate events within the cell to effectively analyze astrocytes in the visual cortex of ferrets. This research will advance the field of cortical circuits and vision processing and integration of stimuli. The future for the research will be to correlate astrocyte activity and the neurons' response to visual stimuli to assess its connection with cognition and integration processes.