Achievement

The neocortex contains hundreds of types of interneurons which can be differentiated by their biochemical properties as well as morphology. IGERT student Brad Rocco and his advisor Ken Fish have been studying interneurons that use the enzymes GAD65 and GAD67 to synthesize the neurotransmitter GABA. Some of these neurons also express another neurotransmitter, somatotstatin (SST). Rocco examined sections of monkey prefrontal cortex and found that SST interneurons that expressed GAD65, GAD67, or both, had three distinct patterns of projection to the six cortical layers. The experiments used multi-label fluorescence confocal microscopy and custom image processing algorithms. This result suggests that the different types of SST/GAD terminals play distinct functional roles with respect to GABA transmission within the cortex. Rocco and Fish also found the same populations of terminals in mouse cortex, and are now using neuronal culturing techniques to study its functional significance.