Confocal Synaptology: Synaptic Rearrangements in Neurodegenerative Disorders and upon Nervous System Injury

Frontiers in Neuroanatomy
Maja VulovicIgor Jakovcevski

Abstract

The nervous system is a notable exception to the rule that the cell is the structural and functional unit of tissue systems and organs. The functional unit of the nervous system is the synapse, the contact between two nerve cells. As such, synapses are the foci of investigations of nervous system organization and function, as well as a potential readout for the progression of various disorders of the nervous system. In the past decade the development of antibodies specific to presynaptic terminals has enabled us to assess, at the optical, laser scanning microscopy level, these subcellular structures, and has provided a simple method for the quantification of various synapses. Indeed, excitatory (glutamatergic) and inhibitory synapses can be visualized using antibodies against the respective vesicular transporters, and choline-acetyl transferase (ChAT) immunoreactivity identifies cholinergic synapses throughout the central nervous system. Here we review the results of several studies in which these methods were used to estimate synaptic numbers as the structural equivalent of functional outcome measures in spinal cord and femoral nerve injuries, as well as in genetic mouse models of neurodegeneration, including Alzheimer's disea...Continue Reading

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Citations

Jan 5, 2019·Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society·Alessandra DonatoMassimo A Hilliard
Jul 17, 2020·The International Journal of Neuroscience·Igor Jakovcevski, Melitta Schachner
Feb 3, 2021·Physiological Reports·Théo MilleSandrine S Bertrand
Feb 16, 2021·Neuroscience·Igor JakovčevskiMelitta Schachner

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
electron microscopy
light microscopy
super-resolution microscopy
confocal microscopy
transgenic

Software Mentioned

ImageJ

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