Statistical Analysis of Tract-Tracing Experiments Demonstrates a Dense, Complex Cortical Network in the Mouse.

ABSTRACT: Anatomical tract tracing methods are the gold standard for estimating the weight of axonal connectivity between a pair of pre-defined brain regions. Large studies, comprising hundreds of experiments, have become feasible by automated methods. However, this comes at the cost of positive-mean noise making it difficult to detect weak connections, which are of particular interest as recent high resolution tract-tracing studies of the macaque have identified many more weak connections, adding up to greater connection density of cortical networks, than previously recognized. We propose a statistical framework that estimates connectivity weights and credibility intervals from multiple tract-tracing experiments. We model the observed signal as a log-normal distribution generated by a combination o

SUBMITTER: Ypma RJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5019374 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature