The Cellular Logic of Sensory Circuits

Margrie Lab

Neurons
Research Area

Perhaps the two most compelling features of the brain are its complex interconnectivity within and between the different parts of the brain, and the myriad types of cell needed to carry out everything the brain is capable of. Our lab is dedicated to mapping the connections within and across these two features—the ways that different classes of cells and the systems they form work together. We believe that only with a quantitative understanding of the heterogeneity of both connectivity and cellular / functional composition, will we be able to elucidate key principles underlying the design and operation of both the healthy and the diseased brain.

We employ a variety of technical approaches, some of which are multidisciplinary and/or were developed in our lab. These include 3D electron microscopic analysis, in vitro and in vivo single and multi-cell targeted recordings, whole-brain connectivity mapping of recorded cells, optogenetics, modelling, and behaviour. Our lab works almost exclusively on mice, which offer a tractable experimental system for establishing causal relationships between the functional connectivity of mammalian neuronal circuits and behaviour.
 

Research Topics

One critical problem that the brain must solve involves the translation of information between allocentric (world-centred) and egocentric (e.g. head-centred) reference frames; that is, the brain must be able to discern which elements of (for example) sight come from movement in the outside world and which come from movements of the eyes, head and body. Due to the retrosplenial (RSP) cortex's anatomical connectivity with structures such as the hippocampal formation and post subiculum, its involvement in spatial memory retrieval and the fact that it contains cells which code for an animal’s speed, location, and the direction and angular velocity of the head, the RSP is believed to play a fundamental role in solving this problem. Our lab has recently discovered a novel circuit that conveys head motion information from the RSP to the deep layers of the primary visual cortex (V1). We hypothesise that this RSP-V1 cortical network is critical for the construction of an egocentric-based visual representation of the environment which may then be relayed back to the RSP for integration with allocentric information. Using viral tracing, and in vivo imaging and physiology, our current work focuses on establishing the functional connectivity of all the key cell types involved in this newly discovered system.

A second question in the lab focuses on in vivo physiological plasticity, which occurs in response to changes in the sensory and social environment. The glomerular circuit of the olfactory bulb is one model system of choice, as local networks can readily be identified and genetically targeted from one mouse to the next. Compared to the cortex, the glomerulus is anatomically and functionally relatively simple; its cellular composition is well understood. However, the intrinsic properties of glomerular neurons vary according to the glomerulus in which they receive odour input. This intrinsic biophysical diversity is known to depend on the identity of the receptor neurons that relay sensory information to the glomerulus. We therefore use this system to investigate the functional significance of intrinsic diversity and plasticity in the context of olfactory information and learning in the behaving animal.  
 

Brain cellular diversity and connectivity as depicted by Brodmann

Brain cellular diversity and connectivity as depicted by Brodmann

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Troy Margrie
Professor of Systems Neuroscience & Associate Director
Joel Bauer
Senior Research Fellow
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Matilda Cloves
PhD Student, Optical Biology
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Mathew Edwards
Research Fellow
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Benjamin Grainger
PhD Student
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Joe Higgins
Aquatics Research Facility Manager
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Panagiota Iordanidou
Quad Laboratories Manager
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Stephen Lenzi
Senior Research Fellow
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Laura Porta
Senior Research Software Engineer
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Sanna Titus
Research Assistant
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Chryssanthi Tsitoura
Senior Research Fellow
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Simon Weiler
Research Fellow
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Yanting Yao
Research Assistant
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Mateo Velez-Fort
Senior Research Fellow
Selected publications

Threat history controls flexible escape behavior in mice

Lenzi SC, Cossell L, Grainger B, Olesen SF, Branco T, Margrie TW
Published by:
Current Biology (32: 2972-2979) (doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.05.022)
02 June 2022

Multisensory coding of angular head velocity in the retrosplenial cortex

Keshavarzi S, Bracey EF, Faville RA, Campagner D, Tyson AL, Lenzi AC, Branco T, Margrie TW
Published by:
Neuron (110: 532-543) (doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2021.10.031)
16 November 2021

A circuit for integration of head and visual motion signals in layer 6 of mouse primary visual cortex

Velez-Fort M, Bracey E, Keshavarzi S, Rosseau C, Cossell L, Lenzi D, Strom M, Margrie TW
Published by:
Neuron (98: 179-191) (doi.org: 10.1016/j.neuron.2018.02.023)
15 March 2018

aMAP is a validated pipeline for registration and segmentation of high-resolution mouse brain data

Niedworok CJ, Brown AP, Jorge Cardoso M, Osten P, Ourselin S, Modat M, Margrie TW
Published by:
Nature Communications (7: 11879) (doi: 10.1038/ncomms11879)
07 July 2016

Synaptic diversity enables temporal coding of coincident multi-sensory input in single neurons

Chabrol FP, Arenz A, Wiechert MT, Margrie TW, DiGregorio DA
Published by:
Nature Neuroscience (18(5): 718-27) (doi: 10.1038/nn.3974)
18 May 2015

Widespread vestibular activation of rodent cortex

Rancz ER, Moya J, Drawitsch F, Brichta AM, Canals S, Margrie TW
Published by:
Journal of Neuroscience (35(15): 5926-5934) (doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1869-14.2015)
15 April 2015

The stimulus selectivity and connectivity of layer 6 principal cells reveals cortical microcircuits underlying visual processing

Velez-Fort M, Rousseau C, Niedworok C, Wickersham IR, Rancz ER, Strom M, Margrie TW
Published by:
Neuron (83: 1431-1443) (doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2014.08.001)
17 September 2014