Neuropharmacology

Biography

Biography: Srikanth Ramaswamy

Abstract

The Blue Brain Project has established a unifying data-driven process for the digital reconstruction of a prototypical neocortical microcircuit. The process unifies a vast body of anatomical and physiological data on ion channel kinetics and distributions, neuron morphologies and electrical types, synaptic kinetics and dynamics to yield an in silico reconstruction of the cellular and synaptic organization of juvenile rat somatosensory cortex. We present a draft anatomical and physiological map of a prototypical neocortical microcircuit. The map represents the first comprehensive integration of available data and knowledge in a quantitative in silico reconstruction of a part of the brain. To achieve this, a novel predictive strategy was developed using sparse data on the cellular and synaptic organization of the somatosensory cortex of a two-week old rat. The microcircuit is 0.29 mm3 in volume and contains about 31,000 neurons belonging to 55 morphological neuron types and 207 morpho-electrical sub-types distributed across 6 layers. The resulting reconstruction is broadly consistent with current knowledge about the neocortical microcircuit and provides an array of predictions on its structure and function across neuronal, synaptic, and circuit levels. The models in the reconstruction are available as a public resource for collaborative and iterative refinement, and in silico neuroscience.