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5 Publications

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    11/25/18 | Magnetocaloric materials as switchable high contrast ratio MRI labels.
    Barbic M, Dodd SJ, Morris HD, Dilley N, Marcheschi B, Huston A, Harris TD, Koretsky AP
    Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. 2018 Nov 25;81(4):2238-46. doi: 10.1002/mrm.27615

    PURPOSE: To develop switchable and tunable labels with high contrast ratio for MRI using magnetocaloric materials that have sharp first-order magnetic phase transitions at physiological temperatures and typical MRI magnetic field strengths.

    METHODS: A prototypical magnetocaloric material iron-rhodium (FeRh) was prepared by melt mixing, high-temperature annealing, and ice-water quenching. Temperature- and magnetic field-dependent magnetization measurements of wire-cut FeRh samples were performed on a vibrating sample magnetometer. Temperature-dependent MRI of FeRh samples was performed on a 4.7T MRI.

    RESULTS: Temperature-dependent MRI clearly demonstrated image contrast changes due to the sharp magnetic state transition of the FeRh samples in the MRI magnetic field (4.7T) and at a physiologically relevant temperature (~37°C).

    CONCLUSION: A magnetocaloric material, FeRh, was demonstrated to act as a high contrast ratio switchable MRI contrast agent due to its sharp first-order magnetic phase transition in the DC magnetic field of MRI and at physiologically relevant temperatures. A wide range of magnetocaloric materials are available that can be tuned by materials science techniques to optimize their response under MRI-appropriate conditions and be controllably switched in situ with temperature, magnetic field, or a combination of both.

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    07/25/18 | An unbiased template of the Drosophila brain and ventral nerve cord.
    Bogovic JA, Otsuna H, Heinrich L, Ito M, Jeter J, Meissner GW, Nern A, Colonell J, Malkesman O, Saalfeld S
    bioRxiv. 2018 Jul 25:. doi: 10.1101/376384

    The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is an important model organism for neuroscience with a wide array of genetic tools that enable the mapping of individuals neurons and neural subtypes. Brain templates are essential for comparative biological studies because they enable analyzing many individuals in a common reference space. Several central brain templates exist for Drosophila, but every one is either biased, uses sub-optimal tissue preparation, is imaged at low resolution, or does not account for artifacts. No publicly available Drosophila ventral nerve cord template currently exists. In this work, we created high-resolution templates of the Drosophila brain and ventral nerve cord using the best-available technologies for imaging, artifact correction, stitching, and template construction using groupwise registration. We evaluated our central brain template against the four most competitive, publicly available brain templates and demonstrate that ours enables more accurate registration with fewer local deformations in shorter time.

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    07/12/18 | A complete electron microscopy volume of the brain of adult Drosophila melanogaster.
    Zheng Z, Lauritzen JS, Perlman E, Robinson CG, Nichols M, Milkie DE, Torrens O, Price J, Fisher CB, Sharifi N, Calle-Schuler SA, Kmecova L, Ali IJ, Karsh B, Trautman ET, Bogovic JA, Hanslovsky P, Jefferis GS, Kazhdan M, Khairy K
    Cell. 2018 Jul 12;174(3):730-43. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.06.019

    Drosophila melanogaster has a rich repertoire of innate and learned behaviors. Its 100,000-neuron brain is a large but tractable target for comprehensive neural circuit mapping. Only electron microscopy (EM) enables complete, unbiased mapping of synaptic connectivity; however, the fly brain is too large for conventional EM. We developed a custom high-throughput EM platform and imaged the entire brain of an adult female fly at synaptic resolution. To validate the dataset, we traced brain-spanning circuitry involving the mushroom body (MB), which has been extensively studied for its role in learning. All inputs to Kenyon cells (KCs), the intrinsic neurons of the MB, were mapped, revealing a previously unknown cell type, postsynaptic partners of KC dendrites, and unexpected clustering of olfactory projection neurons. These reconstructions show that this freely available EM volume supports mapping of brain-spanning circuits, which will significantly accelerate Drosophila neuroscience..

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    04/01/18 | Evaluating the potential of using quantum dots for monitoring electrical signals in neurons.
    Efros AL, Delehanty JB, Huston AL, Medintz IL, Barbic M, Harris TD
    Nature Nanotechnology. 2018 Apr;13(4):278-288. doi: 10.1038/s41565-018-0107-1

    Success in the projects aimed at providing an advanced understanding of the brain is directly predicated on making critical advances in nanotechnology. This Perspective addresses the unique interface of neuroscience and nanomaterials by considering the foundational problem of sensing neuron membrane voltage and offers a potential solution that may be facilitated by a prototypical nanomaterial. Despite substantial improvements, the visualization of instantaneous voltage changes within individual neurons, whether in cell culture or in vivo, at both the single-cell and network level at high speed remains complex and problematic. The unique properties of semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) have made them powerful fluorophores for bioimaging. What is not widely appreciated, however, is that QD photoluminescence is exquisitely sensitive to proximal electric fields. This property should be suitable for sensing voltage changes that occur in the active neuronal membrane. Here, we examine the potential role of QDs in addressing the important challenge of real-time optical voltage imaging.

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    02/19/18 | Single excitatory axons form clustered synapses onto CA1 pyramidal cell dendrites.
    Bloss EB, Cembrowski MS, Karsh B, Colonell J, Fetter RD, Spruston N
    Nature Neuroscience. 2018 Mar;21(3):353-63. doi: 10.1038/s41593-018-0084-6

    CA1 pyramidal neurons are a major output of the hippocampus and encode features of experience that constitute episodic memories. Feature-selective firing of these neurons results from the dendritic integration of inputs from multiple brain regions. While it is known that synchronous activation of spatially clustered inputs can contribute to firing through the generation of dendritic spikes, there is no established mechanism for spatiotemporal synaptic clustering. Here we show that single presynaptic axons form multiple, spatially clustered inputs onto the distal, but not proximal, dendrites of CA1 pyramidal neurons. These compound connections exhibit ultrastructural features indicative of strong synapses and occur much more commonly in entorhinal than in thalamic afferents. Computational simulations revealed that compound connections depolarize dendrites in a biophysically efficient manner, owing to their inherent spatiotemporal clustering. Our results suggest that distinct afferent projections use different connectivity motifs that differentially contribute to dendritic integration.

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