Figure 2

Whisker tactile inputs induce intracellular Ca²⁺changes in the neurons and astrocytes of mouse barre cortex. A) shows two-photon images of these nerve cells (200μm in the depth of barrel cortex), in which OGB-1 labels nerve cells (left panel), SR101 labels astrocytes (middle), and astrocytes are yellow in a merged image (right). Scale bar is 20μm. B) shows the relative changes of OGB-1 fluorescence signals (ΔF/F) averaged from the cell bodies of neurons (green line) and astroctyes (red) in a barrel network (gray bars are the durations of whisker stimuli). C) illustrates a comparison of neuron-astrocyte pairswise synchrony under the conditions with (n=8) and without stimuli (n=6). The synchrony of stimulus-driven activities is significantly higher than that of spontaneous ones (p<0.01). The synchrony of cellular activities is quantified by using the peak cross-correlation coefficient.