Structure and function of neuronal circuits underlying working memory-related sequential activity

Working memory is thought to be mediated by stereotypic neuronal activity patterns in the brain such as neural sequences, in which subsets of neurons are sequentially active in a stereotypical temporal order. Neuronal interactions are fundamentally constrained by the synaptic wiring diagram, but the connectivity between neurons that participate in neuronal sequences is not known, because this requires measuring both the connectivity and activity of hundreds of neurons from the same specimen. Here we propose to use the ID16A nanoimaging beamline to image the connectivity between neurons in a brain sample of a mouse from which we have previously recorded the activity of hundreds of neurons while the mouse was performing a working memory task. By combining functional imaging in behaving mice with X-ray connectomics we will study the structure of neuronal circuits underlying working memory-related sequential neuronal activity.