Automated Remote Focusing, Drift Correction, and Photostimulation to Evaluate Structural Plasticity in Dendritic Spines

Michael S Smirnov, Paul R Evans, Tavita R Garrett, Long Yan and Ryohei Yasuda

PLOS ONE, 2017, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: Long-term structural plasticity of dendritic spines plays a key role in synaptic plasticity, the cellular basis for learning and memory. The biochemical step is mediated by a complex network of signaling proteins in spines. Two-photon imaging techniques combined with two-photon glutamate uncaging allows researchers to induce and quantify structural plasticity in single dendritic spines. However, this method is laborious and slow, making it unsuitable for high throughput screening of factors necessary for structural plasticity. Here we introduce a MATLAB-based module built for Scanimage to automatically track, image, and stimulate multiple dendritic spines. We implemented an electrically tunable lens in combination with a drift correction algorithm to rapidly and continuously track targeted spines and correct sample movements. With a straightforward user interface to design custom multi-position experiments, we were able to adequately image and produce targeted plasticity in multiple dendritic spines using glutamate uncaging. Our methods are inexpensive, open source, and provides up to a five-fold increase in throughput for quantifying structural plasticity of dendritic spines.

Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0170586 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 70586&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0170586

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0170586

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().