ムラガキ　ヨシヒロ   Muragaki Yoshihiro   村垣　善浩    所属   医学部 医学科（東京女子医科大学病院）    職種   客員教授
論文種別	原著
言語種別	英語
査読の有無	査読あり
表題	Large-scale somatotopic refinement via functional synapse elimination in the sensory thalamus of developing mice.
掲載誌名	正式名：The Journal of neuroscience 略　 称：J Neurosci.
巻・号・頁	34(4),pp.1258-1270
著者・共著者	TAKEUCHI Yuichi†, ASANO Hidetsugu, KATAYAMA Yoko, MURAGAKI Yoshihiro, IMOTO Keiji, MIYATA Mariko
発行年月	2014/01
概要	Functional synapse elimination and strengthening are crucial developmental processes in the formation of precise neuronal circuits in the somatosensory system, but the underlying alterations in topographical organization are not yet fully understood. To address this issue, we generated transgenic mice in which afferent fibers originating from the whisker-related brain region, called the maxillary principal trigeminal nucleus (PrV2), were selectively visualized with genetically expressed fluorescent protein. We found that functional synapse elimination drove and established large-scale somatotopic refinement even after the thalamic barreloid architecture was formed. Before functional synapse elimination, the whisker sensory thalamus was innervated by afferent fibers not only from the PrV2, but also from the brainstem nuclei representing other body parts. Most notably, only afferent fibers from PrV2 onto a whisker sensory thalamic neuron selectively survived and were strengthened, whereas other afferent fibers were preferentially eliminated via their functional synapse elimination. This large-scale somatotopic refinement was at least partially dependent on somatosensory experience. These novel results uncovered a previously unrecognized role of developmental synapse elimination in the large-scale, instead of the fine-scale, somatotopic refinement even after the initial segregation of the barreloid map.
DOI	10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3865-13.2014.
PMID	24453317 23952800 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]