Tobias Rose, University of Bonn Medical Center: Both Eyes on Thalamus: Stability, Plasticity, and Functional Convergence in dLGN

Abstract

Our brain faces a fundamental challenge: On one hand, it must rewire itself constantly to learn from experience. On the other hand, it must consistently represent the external world to allow stable sensation, action, and memory. In our group “Circuit mechanisms of Behavior” at the IEECR, we study the stability and stabilization of the neural code in visual perception and learning during passive experience and dynamic behavior. We address the “stability-plasticity-conundrum” in the highly interconnected mouse visual system, retrosplenial cortex, and hippocampal formation on multiple scales – ranging from the synaptic to the circuit level.

 I will present our previous and ongoing work on stability, plasticity, and functional input selection in the mouse visual thalamus. Classically thought to relay pathway-specific information stably and faithfully to visual cortex, we have found surprising signatures of experience-dependent plasticity paired with an extraordinary degree of functional selectivity on top of wide-spread structural convergence. Building on long-term synaptic two-photon recordings of thalamic activity, novel dual-color optogenetic in vitro mapping approaches, and large-scale morphometric analysis, our work sheds light on the rules of functional retinothalamic convergence in the visual pathway. It also provides an extreme example of functional primacy over structural synaptic connectivity and emphasizes the necessity for the functional evaluation of anatomical data obtained with viral circuit tracing tools.

About the speaker and his research
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