Functional connectomics reveals general wiring rule in mouse visual cortex
Abstract
Abstract Understanding the relationship between circuit connectivity and function is crucial for uncovering how the brain computes. In mouse primary visual cortex, excitatory neurons with similar response properties are more likely to be synaptically connected 1–8 ; however, broader connectivity rules remain unknown. Here we leverage the millimetre-scale MICrONS dataset to analyse synaptic connectivity and functional properties of neurons across cortical layers and areas. Our results reveal that neurons with similar response properties are preferentially connected within and across layers and areas—including feedback connections—supporting the universality of ‘like-to-like’ connectivity across the visual hierarchy. Using a validated digital twin model, we separated neuronal tuning into feature (what neurons respond to) and spatial (receptive field location) components. We found that only the feature component predicts fine-scale synaptic connections beyond what could be explained by the proximity of axons and dendrites. We also discovered a higher-order rule whereby postsynaptic neuron cohorts downstream of presynaptic cells show greater functional similarity than predicted by a pairwise like-to-like rule. Recurrent neural networks trained on a simple classification task develop connectivity patterns that mirror both pairwise and higher-order rules, with magnitudes similar to those in MICrONS data. Ablation studies in these recurrent neural networks reveal that disrupting like-to-like connections impairs performance more than disrupting random connections. These findings suggest that these connectivity principles may have a functional role in sensory processing and learning, highlighting shared principles between biological and artificial systems.
Article Details
Authors (63)
Zhuokun Ding
Paul G. Fahey
Stelios Papadopoulos
Eric Y. Wang
Brendan Celii
Christos Papadopoulos
Andersen Chang
Alexander B. Kunin
Dat Tran
Jiakun Fu
Zhiwei Ding
Saumil Patel
Lydia Ntanavara
Rachel Froebe
Kayla Ponder
Taliah Muhammad
J. Alexander Bae
Agnes L. Bodor
Derrick Brittain
JoAnn Buchanan
Daniel J. Bumbarger
Manuel A. Castro
Erick Cobos
Sven Dorkenwald
Leila Elabbady
Akhilesh Halageri
Zhen Jia
Chris Jordan
Dan Kapner
Nico Kemnitz
Sam Kinn
Kisuk Lee
Kai Li
Ran Lu
Thomas Macrina
Gayathri Mahalingam
Eric Mitchell
Shanka Subhra Mondal
Shang Mu
Barak Nehoran
Sergiy Popovych
Casey M. Schneider-Mizell
William Silversmith
Marc Takeno
Russel Torres
Nicholas L. Turner
William Wong
Jingpeng Wu
Wenjing Yin
Szi-chieh Yu
Dimitri Yatsenko
Emmanouil Froudarakis
Fabian Sinz
Krešimir Josić
Robert Rosenbaum
H. Sebastian Seung
Forrest Collman
Nuno Maçarico da Costa
R. Clay Reid
Edgar Y. Walker
Xaq Pitkow
Jacob Reimer
Andreas S. Tolias