Connectomes across development reveal principles of brain maturation
Name
2020.04.30.066209v3.full.pdf
Description
Submitted version
Size
15.57 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
59fcefd8e2baacad72b19c3e749050b1
Author(s)
Witvliet, Daniel
Mulcahy, Ben
Mitchell, James K
Meirovitch, Yaron
Berger, Daniel R
Wu, Yuelong
Liu, Yufang
Koh, Wan Xian
Parvathala, Rajeev
Holmyard, Douglas
Date Issued
2021
Journal
Nature
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Citation
Witvliet, Daniel, Mulcahy, Ben, Mitchell, James K, Meirovitch, Yaron, Berger, Daniel R et al. 2021. "Connectomes across development reveal principles of brain maturation." Nature, 596 (7871).
Version
Original manuscript
Abstract
An animal's nervous system changes as its body grows from birth to adulthood and its behaviours mature1-8. The form and extent of circuit remodelling across the connectome is unknown3,9-15. Here we used serial-section electron microscopy to reconstruct the full brain of eight isogenic Caenorhabditis elegans individuals across postnatal stages to investigate how it changes with age. The overall geometry of the brain is preserved from birth to adulthood, but substantial changes in chemical synaptic connectivity emerge on this consistent scaffold. Comparing connectomes between individuals reveals substantial differences in connectivity that make each brain partly unique. Comparing connectomes across maturation reveals consistent wiring changes between different neurons. These changes alter the strength of existing connections and create new connections. Collective changes in the network alter information processing. During development, the central decision-making circuitry is maintained, whereas sensory and motor pathways substantially remodel. With age, the brain becomes progressively more feedforward and discernibly modular. Thus developmental connectomics reveals principles that underlie brain maturation.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/S41586-021-03778-8
