Date of Award

7-12-2023

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Author's Department

Biology & Biomedical Sciences (Neurosciences)

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Degree Type

Dissertation

Abstract

The following work seeks to better understand how neurons process multiple streams of information within the branches of their dendritic arbors. We use correlated light and electron microscopy to capture both live subcellular calcium responses and detailed morphology and synaptic connectivity in a unique retinal amacrine cell in order to directly study the relationship between structure and function. The vesicular glutamate transporter 3-expressing amacrine cell (VG3) selectively integrates and segregates visual information within its arbor branches and provides multiple target neuron types with appropriate excitatory or inhibitory synaptic inputs. By reconstructing VG3 arbor branches, synapses, and connected cell types, we learn which retinal circuits and visual pathways the VG3 contributes to and to what extent. By comparing this connectomic information with the subcellular responses to light stimuli in those same arbor branches, we learn how visual information flows through the VG3 arbor and how it selectively integrates multiple synaptic inputs and targets outputs to specific downstream neurons in opposing visual pathways simultaneously. Along the way we describe a polyaxonal amacrine cell which almost exclusively targets VG3 and which is thought to be a primary source of the VG3’s ability to discriminate between local motion and global motion.

Language

English (en)

Chair and Committee

Joshua Morgan

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