Seth GRANT The architecture of synapse diversity in health and disease
IBENS Neuroscience Seminar
11h
Le séminaire de Seth Grant (Edinburgh University, UK) aura lieu dans la salle des Résistants (1er étage, escalier A), 45 rue d’Ulm 75005 Paris
The brain’s defining feature is its enormous number of synaptic connections. Traditionally, synapses were thought to fall into only a few broad classes—excitatory, inhibitory, or modulatory—based largely on neurotransmitter identity. The advent of synaptome mapping, which enables systematic, single-synapse–resolution analysis across the entire mouse brain, has overturned this view. These studies reveal an unexpectedly vast diversity of synapse types and their organisation into a highly structured three-dimensional map known as the synaptome architecture. This architecture provides a powerful new framework for understanding how innate and learned behaviours are encoded, how neurological and psychiatric diseases selectively target specific synapse populations, and how therapeutic drugs act on brain circuits. Our current work is focussing on the synaptome architecture of the human brain in health and disease.