Chinese Scientists Achieve Complete Three-Modal Analysis of a Single Neuron

Two research teams from the Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, recently jointly achieved an important breakthrough, for the first time synchronously decoding three types of information—functional, structural, and molecular—on the same neuron. The related findings were published on June 18 in the international academic journal Cell. The research teams built a domestically developed multimodal analysis platform, IMC, which integrates processes such as in vivo observation, wholebrain connectome reconstruction, and gene molecular detection. Relying on two independently developed technologies, the platform can record neurons' responses to stimuli in the brains of awake mice and further reconstruct their morphological connections and intracellular gene distribution. The researchers said that this method has collected trimodal data from more than 100 neurons and, based on that, discovered new neuronal subtypes. The study also showed that the spatial distribution of genes inside cells is closely related to neurontype identification. This achievement is expected to provide new technical support for understanding how the brain works, studying brain diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, and building databases for brain science and braininspired artificial intelligence.