News Finding: That's a feature that is common in early brain development, but not in the adult," he said.
Paper Finding: We conclude that the higher correlation coefficients in Fmr1 −/− mice at P14-16 are explained, at least in part, by a higher than normal proportion of neurons participating in peaks of synchrony.
News Context: Mice that lack the fmr1 gene (and therefore lack the FMRP protein) show some of the same symptoms of human FXS, including seizures, impaired sleep, abnormal social relationships, and learning defects. That's a feature that is common in early brain development, but not in the adult," he said. "In essence, this points to a relative immaturity of brain circuits in FXS," added Tiago Goncalves, a former post-doc in Portera-Cailliau's lab and first author of the study.
Paper Context: Finally, we calculated neuronal firing rates, as extrapolated from calcium-imaging data by temporal deconvolution (see Online Methods), but could not detect differences between genotypes at any age using this method (data not shown). We conclude that the higher correlation coefficients in Fmr1 −/− mice at P14-16 are explained, at least in part, by a higher than normal proportion of neurons participating in peaks of synchrony. First, we established that action potential kinetics were indistinguishable between wild-type and Fmr1 −/− mice (Supplementary Fig.