Linking Structure to Function in Sensory Networks of Autism Spectrum Disorder

We plan to combine structural and functional information about brain networks and how they change in the context of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The goals are to collect high-resolution whole-brain datasets using hard X-ray nano-tomography, and to combine these data with our whole-brain functional datasets. This work is proposed in the zebrafish larval model system, which provides suitable optical properties to produce the in vivo functional data and a small size, enabling whole-brain analysis at the throughput offered by the synchrotron source. With light-sheet microscopy, we will describe how functional sensory networks differ in normal and fmr1-mutant (ASD model) zebrafish and register these data to the 100nm-resolution volumetric datasets of the same animals collected at ESRF. This will provide the first holistic description of how changes in the microstructure and network architecture of the brain lead to phenotypes like those seen in patients with psychiatric disorders.