GD1022-18D4
the most accurate and largest reconstruction yet
This piece represents a small stretch of dendrite receiving synaptic innervation by excitatory and inhibitory axons in the stratum oriens of the adult mouse hippocampus CA1. The position of each synaptic contact is shown using steel (inhibitory synapses, dark stain) or steel and fabric (excitatory synapses, light stain). I’ve been studying the distribution of these synaptic contacts in the lab and wanted to develop a deeper intuitive sense of the spatial relationships between them.
On display at SfN2025 in San Diego
Excitatory spine contacts
On display at SfN2025
Sanding down to achieve membrane curvature
Polishing the GABAergic bouton
Excitatory axon under construction
Spines under construction
Building the inhibitory synapse
Layered plywood creates a synaptic topography
Building the inhibitory axon
Building an excitatory spine synapse
Synaptic topography
Slowing laying the spines in along the dendrite
Mid stage sanding
Morning in the workshop
Chunky spines
Adding inhibitory and excitatory axons
Building excitatory axons
Building excitatory axons
Laying out the spines for reconstruction
Gluing the core of the dendrite
Steel rod through the core of the dendrite
Early stage of dendrite reconstruction
First steps in dendrite reconstruction
Mapping segmentation onto plywood
About the build
I start each project feeling a certain need to see these structures in real 3D, to pull them off the computer screen, and to use my own hands to do it. That feeling was so strong for this piece. It’s the biggest one I’ve done and it’s the first using plywood. The nice thing about plywood is its standard thickness. Having just finished the N=1 pieces, I was excited to work with wood sheets of uniform thickness. Essentially, I scaled everything to the thickness of the plywood sheets. In this case I used 1.113 cm thick sheets which corresponds to a tissue slice thickness of 45 nanometers.