Abstract
Damage in biological neuronal networks triggers a complex functional reorganization whose mechanisms are still poorly understood. To delineate this reorganization process, here we investigate the functional alterations of in vitro rat cortical circuits following localized laser ablation. The analysis of the functional network configuration before and after ablation allowed us to quantify the extent of functional alterations and the characteristic spatial and temporal scales along recovery. We observed that damage precipitated a fast rerouting of information flow that restored network’s communicability in about 15 min. Functional restoration was led by the immediate neighbors around trauma but was orchestrated by the entire network. Our in vitro setup exposes the ability of neuronal circuits to articulate fast responses to acute damage, and may serve as a proxy to devise recovery strategies in actual brain circuits. Moreover, this biological setup can become a benchmark to empirically test network theories about the spontaneous recovery in dynamical networks.
- calcium imaging
- focal damage
- functional recovery
- laser microsurgery
- network neuroscience
- neuronal cultures
Footnotes
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
This research is part of MESO-BRAIN. The MESO-BRAIN Project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme Grant 713140 (to S.T., E.E.-P., J.A., O.E.O., P.L.-A., J.S.). J.S. and S.T. were supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad Projects FIS2013-41144-P, FIS2016-78507-C2-2-P, and FIS2017-90782-REDT (IBERSINC) and by the Generalitat de Catalunya Grant 2017-SGR-1061. C.G. was supported by Juan de la Cierva-Formación (Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades) and by the James S. McDonnell Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship Grant 220020457. A.A. was supported by the Generalitat de Catalunya Project 2017-SGR-896, Spanish MINECO Projects FIS2015-71582-C2-1 and FIS2017-90782-REDT, ICREA Academia, and the James S. McDonnell Foundation Grant 220020325. J.A., O.E.O., and P.L.-A. were supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (AEI/FEDER) Project FIS2016-80455-R, the “Severo Ochoa” Programme for Centers of Excellence in R&D (SEV-2015-0522), Fundació Privada Cellex, Fundación Mig-Puig, Generalitat de Catalunya through the CERCA program, and Laserlab-Europe (EU-H2020 654148).
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