Prof. Elly Nedivi

In collaboration with Dr. So's group in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, Professor Nedivi has fabricated a custom designed multi-photon microscope for chronic in vivo imaging of neuronal morphology in the intact rodent cerebral cortex. Using this system we have imaged and reconstructed the dendritic trees of neurons in visual cortex of thy1 -EGFP transgenic mice. These mice express EGFP in a random subset of neurons sparsely distributed within the superficial cortical layers that are optically accessible through surgically implanted cranial windows. Chronic imaging of the same neurons over a period of months, revealed an unexpected degree of remodeling in adult neurons. Establishing the baseline dynamics of dendritic remodeling now allows us to examine the brains of mice deficient in specific CPGs and ask how they compare with normal brains.