cognitive function during typical development. In this talk I will present work combining genetics, behavioural, and both structural and functional MRI measures to study the development of executive functions during late childhood and adolescence. The findings show that although concomitant, functional decreases in brain activity in the prefrontal cortex do not necessarily reflect decreases in grey matter volumes; that neuroimaging data may be more sensitive to individual differences associated with genetic polymorphisms or academic performance than behaviour alone; and that the effect of genetic polymorphisms are not necessarily static during development. Biosketch Iroise Dumontheil is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London. Following her PhD completed in between UCL and University Paris VI, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the MRC-Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, at UCL, and most recently at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. She has run a series of research studies on the typical development of social cognition and cognitive control during adolescence, using a combination of methods including functional and structural neuroimaging, behavioural assessments, and genetics. ******* 3th July 2011 Dr. Tom Mrsic-Flogel Wellcome Trust Research Career Development Fellow, UCL Department of Neuroscience, Physiology & Pharmacology ‘Mapping synaptic connectivity between functionally characterised neurons in the neocortex’ The Levinsky Room, Philip Ullmann Wing, UCL Institute of Child Health, 30 Guilford Street, London, WC1N 1EH Abstract Neuronal connectivity is fundamental to information processing in the brain. Understanding the mechanisms of sensory processing, therefore, requires uncovering how connection patterns between neurons relate to their function. This has not been attempted with existing approaches, because neuronal functionality has to be assessed in the intact brain (electrode recordings, two-photon calcium imaging), while synaptic connectivity mapping is only feasible in brain slices (paired whole-cell recordings). To provide a solution to this problem, we have combined three powerful techniques that enable us first to visualise and characterise response properties of hundreds of neurons in the cortex with two-photon calcium imaging, then to identify the same neurons in slices of the same tissue using custom 3D image registration algorithms, and finally assay synaptic connections between a subset of these neurons with multiple whole-cell recordings. Applying this approach to mouse visual cortex, we found that connection probability was related to the similarity of visually
cognitive function during typical development. In this talk I will present work combining genetics, behavioural, and both structural and functional MRI measures to study the development of executive functions during late childhood and adolescence. The findings show that although concomitant, functional decreases in brain activity in the prefrontal cortex do not necessarily reflect decreases in grey matter volumes; that neuroimaging data may be more sensitive to individual differences associated with genetic polymorphisms or academic performance than behaviour alone; and that the effect of genetic polymorphisms are not necessarily static during development. Biosketch Iroise Dumontheil is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London. Following her PhD completed in between UCL and University Paris VI, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the MRC-Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, at UCL, and most recently at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. She has run a series of research studies on the typical development of social cognition and cognitive control during adolescence, using a combination of methods including functional and structural neuroimaging, behavioural assessments, and genetics. ******* 3th July 2011 Dr. Tom Mrsic-Flogel Wellcome Trust Research Career Development Fellow, UCL Department of Neuroscience, Physiology & Pharmacology ‘Mapping synaptic connectivity between functionally characterised neurons in the neocortex’ The Levinsky Room, Philip Ullmann Wing, UCL Institute of Child Health, 30 Guilford Street, London, WC1N 1EH Abstract Neuronal connectivity is fundamental to information processing in the brain. Understanding the mechanisms of sensory processing, therefore, requires uncovering how connection patterns between neurons relate to their function. This has not been attempted with existing approaches, because neuronal functionality has to be assessed in the intact brain (electrode recordings, two-photon calcium imaging), while synaptic connectivity mapping is only feasible in brain slices (paired whole-cell recordings). To provide a solution to this problem, we have combined three powerful techniques that enable us first to visualise and characterise response properties of hundreds of neurons in the cortex with two-photon calcium imaging, then to identify the same neurons in slices of the same tissue using custom 3D image registration algorithms, and finally assay synaptic connections between a subset of these neurons with multiple whole-cell recordings. Applying this approach to mouse visual cortex, we found that connection probability was related to the similarity of visually