An immunofluorescence toolbox for the assessment of synaptic pathology.

Within the lab, many ongoing projects use Resting state functional MRI to study the brain's functional network architecture during development, health and disease. These longitudinal in vivo studies often require ex vivo confirmation of the observed phenomena. As such, within this project we wish to implement an immunofluorescence analysis pipeline to asses synaptic and neuronal pathology in mice, rats and zebra finches. We will set up a pipeline to determine: (i) the amount of structurally intact synapses, (ii) the GABA/GLU ratio, (iii) the amount and ratio of GABAergic and glutamatergic synapses and (iv), the amount of serotonergic, noradrenergic, dopaminergic and cholinergic neurons.

Keywords:IMMUNOFLUORESCENCE METHODOLOGY, NEUROSCIENCE

Disciplines:Neurosciences, Biological and physiological psychology, Cognitive science and intelligent systems, Developmental psychology and ageing