Proceedings of CNCM 2023 conference, "Structure, Function and Development of Neural Circuits (August 21-23, 2023)"
About
The 2023 conference is an in-person conference on “Structure, Function and Development of Neural Circuits” (August 21-23, 2023), co-sponsored by the Cajal Club, the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and the UC Irvine Center for Neural Circuit Mapping (CNCM) located at the Beckman Center of the National Academies of Science & Engineering, Irvine CA. We have hundreds of formal registrants from diverse geographic locations in the US and internationally. The conference includes talks from world leading scientists and have a special delegation from the Cajal Institute (Madrid, Spain) and the Spanish Society of Neuroscience. The NIH-funded 4D Nucleome Consortium will co-host additional conference events including spatial transcriptomics, miniscope imaging, neuroscience statistics workshops and MERFISH bootcamps.
Proceedings of CNCM 2023 conference, "Structure, Function and Development of Neural Circuits (August 21-23, 2023)"
Oral talks (1)
Cell Type Organization Across the Mouse Brain
To understand the function of the brain and how its dysfunction leads to brain diseases, it is essential to uncover the cell type composition of the brain, how the cell types are connected with each other and what their roles are in circuit function. At the Allen Institute, we have built multiple technology platforms, including single-cell transcriptomics, spatial transcriptomics, single and multi-patching electrophysiology, 3D reconstruction of neuronal morphology, and brain-wide connectivity mapping, to characterize the molecular, anatomical, physiological, and connectional properties of brain cell types in a systematic manner, towards the creation of multi-modal cell atlases for the mouse and human brains. We have now generated a comprehensive and high-resolution transcriptomic and spatial cell type atlas for the whole adult mouse brain, based on the combination of two single-cell-level, whole-brain-scale datasets by scRNA- seq and MERFISH. The atlas is hierarchically organized into five nested levels of classification: 7 divisions, 32 classes, ~300 subclasses, ~1,000 supertypes and ~5,200 clusters. We systematically analyzed the neuronal, non-neuronal, and immature neuronal cell types across the brain and identified a high degree of correspondence between transcriptomic identity and spatial specificity for each cell type. The study uncovered tremendous heterogeneity in neurotransmitter and neuropeptide expression and co- expression patterns in different cell types, suggesting they mediate myriad modes of intercellular communications. We also found that transcription factors are major determinants of cell type classification in the adult mouse brain and identified a combinatorial transcription factor code that defines cell types across all parts of the brain. This study reveals extraordinary cellular diversity and underlying rules of brain organization. It establishes a benchmark reference atlas and a foundational resource for deep and integrative investigations of cell type and circuit function, development, and evolution of the mammalian brain.