About this Research Topic
Achieving a complete anatomical and functional connectome is a major goal of neuroscientific research. A complete connectome would be a powerful tool to winnow hypotheses about how neural circuits encode information and transduce them to high level functions and behaviours. Moreover, characterizing the wiring diagram of the brain is essential to help detecting disease-related abnormalities.
Unfortunately, a complete and high fidelity structural and functional map of the brain is still lacking. Even more complicated is interlinking the datasets extracted at the different levels of anatomical organization (molecules, synapses, cells, microcircuits, brain areas, whole brain), functional correlates (single-neuron activity, population-level dynamics – EEG, fMRI, etc.), and correlating this information in one species with observations in another, to extrapolate results obtained in animal models and in vitro to humans. Finally, caveats due to the ever-changing nature of functional and effective connectivity (e.g. as a consequence of brain state, task performance, etc.) need to be taken into account when developing a functional connectome.
The present Research Topic aims to collect progresses and challenges from a large variety of research fields, ranging from among experimental to theoretical neuroscience.
We welcome submissions in the form of original research articles, reviews, methodological and technological advances whose specific themes include, but are not limited to, approaches, tools, algorithms, protocols, models and the results achieved for:
- Quantitatively reconstructing synapses, neurons and circuits from empirical data, including protocols for tissue processing and techniques for molecular labelling.
- Monitoring and processing electrophysiological and functional neural activity (including hemodynamic-based measures), connectivity plasticity, from sub-cellular compartments to population dynamics.
- Integrating the structural and functional information on the same scale and for examining the relationship between morphology and connectivity at different levels of organization
- Standardizing the experimental procedures, for delivering a more systematic procedures and allowing a better comparison of the results among species
- Making testable predictions of higher levels functions starting from knowledge from lower levels of organization
- Making the raw and processed datasets usable, re-usable and interpretable
- Non-methodological papers describing results achieved toward the delineation of an high fidelity brain structural and/or functional maps.
Unfortunately, a complete and high fidelity structural and functional map of the brain is still lacking. Even more complicated is interlinking the datasets extracted at the different levels of anatomical organization (molecules, synapses, cells, microcircuits, brain areas, whole brain), functional correlates (single-neuron activity, population-level dynamics – EEG, fMRI, etc.), and correlating this information in one species with observations in another, to extrapolate results obtained in animal models and in vitro to humans. Finally, caveats due to the ever-changing nature of functional and effective connectivity (e.g. as a consequence of brain state, task performance, etc.) need to be taken into account when developing a functional connectome.
The present Research Topic aims to collect progresses and challenges from a large variety of research fields, ranging from among experimental to theoretical neuroscience.
We welcome submissions in the form of original research articles, reviews, methodological and technological advances whose specific themes include, but are not limited to, approaches, tools, algorithms, protocols, models and the results achieved for:
- Quantitatively reconstructing synapses, neurons and circuits from empirical data, including protocols for tissue processing and techniques for molecular labelling.
- Monitoring and processing electrophysiological and functional neural activity (including hemodynamic-based measures), connectivity plasticity, from sub-cellular compartments to population dynamics.
- Integrating the structural and functional information on the same scale and for examining the relationship between morphology and connectivity at different levels of organization
- Standardizing the experimental procedures, for delivering a more systematic procedures and allowing a better comparison of the results among species
- Making testable predictions of higher levels functions starting from knowledge from lower levels of organization
- Making the raw and processed datasets usable, re-usable and interpretable
- Non-methodological papers describing results achieved toward the delineation of an high fidelity brain structural and/or functional maps.
Keywords: Brain Connectome, Brain Connectivity, Brain Plasticity, System Neuroscience, Neuron Functionality
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
