How to Observe Neuronal Connections



What is a neuronal connection?

Neuron is an electrically excitable cell that processes and transmits information through electrical and chemical signals. These signals between neuron occur via specialized connections called “synapses”.

How to identify these connections

Calcium Fluorescence Imaging is the methodology that we use to identify the neuronal connections.

Calcium Fluorescence Imaging

Calcium Fluorescence Imaging is very famous methodology to analyze cells. In this test, Ca2+ ions are allowed to go through the neuron and fluorescent molecules that can respond to the binding of Ca2+ ions by changing their fluorescence properties this changes can identified by calcium indicators. The imaging of calcium influx into neurons provides an indirect but accurate measure of action-potential generation within individual neurons.


                                                         Calcium Fluorescence Imaging

How to analyze the Imaging data

Actually we can graph the Imaging data with respect to the time. Using the graph we can identify the action-potential generating time differences of neighbor neurons. If those two times are very near we can assume that there can be a connection between them. But we have to analyze further.

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