Berlin 2015 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 34: Statistical Physics of Biological Systems II (joint BP/DY/CPP)

BP 34.12: Talk

Wednesday, March 18, 2015, 13:00–13:15, H 1028

Genetic networks specifying the functional architecture of orientation domains in V1 — •Joscha Liedtke and Fred Wolf — Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Am Fassberg 17, 37077 Goettingen (Germany)

Although genetic information is critically important for brain development and structure, it is widely believed that neocortical functional architecture is largely shaped by activity dependent mechanisms.

Here we show theoretically that mathematical models of genetic networks of principal neurons interacting by long range axonal morphogen transport can generate morphogen patterns that exactly prescribe the functional architecture of the primary visual cortex (V1) as experimentally observed. We analyze in detail an example genetic network that encodes the functional architecture of V1 by a dynamically generated morphogen pattern. We use analytical methods from weakly non-linear analysis [Cross & Hohenberg 1993] complemented by numerical simulations to obtain solutions of the model. In particular we find that the pinwheel statistics are in quantitative agreement with high precision experimental measurements [Kaschube et al. 2010].

This theory opens a novel perspective on the experimentally observed robustness of V1's architecture against radically abnormal developmental conditions such a dark rearing [White et al. 2001]. Furthermore, it provides for the first time a scheme how the pattern of a complex cortical architecture can be specified using only a small genetic bandwidth.