Biocytin Recovery and 3D Reconstructions of Filled Hippocampal CA2 Interneurons

Abstract

How cortical network activity processes information is of importance to a large number of basic and clinical scientific questions. The protocol described here identifies the basic building blocks of this circuitry. The in-depth studies of cortical regions will ultimately provide other scientists with the circuit components needed for an understanding of how the brain acquires, processes and stores information and what goes wrong in disease, while the electrophysiological and morphological data are widely used by computational neuroscientists in the construction of model networks that explore information processing. The protocol outlined here describes how biocytin-filled cells recorded in the CA2 region of the hippocampus are recovered and then reconstructed in 3D. Additionally, the protocol describes the demonstration of calcium binding protein or peptide content in recorded interneurons.