Substantial evidence at the subcellular level indicates that the spatial arrangement of synaptic inputs onto dendrites could play a significant role in cortical computations, but how synapses of functionally defined cortical networks are arranged within the dendrites of individual neurons remains unclear. Here we assessed one-dimensional spatial receptive fields of individual dendritic spines within individual layer 2/3 neuron dendrites. Spatial receptive field properties of dendritic spines were strikingly diverse, with no evidence of large-scale topographic organization. At a fine scale, organization was evident: neighboring spines separated by less than 10 μm shared similar spatial receptive field properties and exhibited a distance-dependent correlation in sensory-driven and spontaneous activity patterns. Fine-scale dendritic organization was supported by the fact that functional groups of spines defined by dimensionality reduction of receptive field properties exhibited non-random dendritic clustering. Our results demonstrate that functional synaptic clustering is a robust feature existing at a local spatial scale.

中文翻译：

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全球疾病中的局部秩序：视觉空间的突触体系结构

在亚细胞水平上的大量证据表明，突触输入到树突上的空间排列可能在皮层计算中发挥重要作用，但是尚不清楚功能定义的皮层网络的突触如何排列在单个神经元的树突内。在这里，我们评估了单个2/3神经元树突中单个树突棘的一维空间接受场。树突棘的空间感受野特性惊人地不同，没有大规模地形组织的证据。在良好的规模上，组织是明显的：相距小于10μm的相邻刺共享相似的空间感受野特性，并在感觉驱动和自发活动模式中表现出距离相关的相关性。细度树突状组织受到以下事实的支持：由感受野性质的维数减少所定义的棘突官能团表现出非随机的树突状聚集。我们的结果表明，功能性突触聚类是在局部空间尺度上存在的强大功能。