For a computational model of the rat-hippocampus I would like to better understand how the projections from the entorhinal cortex to the hippocampus looks like. I think, data obtained with CLARITY-method would be the best for my needs. Does anybody have volumetric data of the rat hippocampus and adjacent regions that he could share with me?
Annex data that you can help: you can find them on the net. Require a processor and capture images. You can see the information (will be useful ...)
CLARITY uses a chemical process to transform intact biological tissue into a hybrid of tissue and hydrogel, a transparent material that keeps three-dimensional tissue structure intact during preservation. This process enables detailed exploration and analysis of the fine biological and molecular structure of the entire brain. The new protocol still involves hydrogel formation but improves upon the approach by reducing the risk of damaging the preserved brain tissue, which is especially important when working with irreplaceable human brain samples.
The second improvement has to do with how the tissue is imaged. Under the original CLARITY protocol, the imaging process was relatively slow—not a problem for smaller animal brains but a single human brain would take approximately 80 years to complete. The new protocol incorporates a method called light-sheet microscopy that greatly accelerates the imaging process so that visualizing an entire human brain would only take about 220 days.
The new methods were developed with support from DARPA’s Neuro Function, Activity, Structure, and Technology (Neuro-FAST) program by the same Stanford University research team that created the original CLARITY technique. It is described in detail in a paper in Nature Protocols (http://bit.ly/1nRiIW1)
The Neuro-FAST program has as its goal the development of new neurotechnologies to enable unprecedented visualization and decoding of brain activity. DARPA is interested in CLARITY for its potential to reveal principles fundamental to the understanding of neural systems. Neuro-FAST intends to more fully leverage the CLARITY method by integrating new discoveries in genetics, optical recording technologies and brain-computer interfaces, with the goal of better understanding how brain processes work.
Sicerely
Genaro G Ortiz MD., PhD
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