Morphological principles of neuronal mitochondria.

In the highly dynamic metabolic landscape of a neuron, mitochondrial membrane architectures can provide critical insight into the unique energy balance of the cell. Current theoretical calculations of functional outputs like adenosine triphosphate and heat often represent mitochondria as idealized geometries, and therefore, can miscalculate the metabolic fluxes. To analyze mitochondrial morphology in neurons of mouse cerebellum neuropil, 3D tracings of complete synaptic and axonal mitochondria were constructed using a database of serial transmission electron microscopy (TEM) tomography images and converted to watertight meshes with minimal distortion of the original microscopy volumes with a granularity of 1.

Feedforward Thalamocortical Connectivity Preserves Stimulus Timing Information in Sensory Pathways.

Reliable timing of cortical spikes in response to visual events is crucial in representing visual inputs to the brain. Spikes in the primary visual cortex (V1) need to occur at the same time within a repeated visual stimulus. Two classical mechanisms are employed by the cortex to enhance reliable timing.