TY - THES ID - 134983333 TI - Characterizing the zebrafish pallium by a combination of electrophysiology, imaging and genetic tools. AU - Deneubourg, Celine AU - Yaksi, Emre AU - KU Leuven. Faculteit Geneeskunde. Opleiding Master of Biomedical Sciences (Leuven) PY - 2018 PB - Leuven KU Leuven. Faculteit Geneeskunde DB - UniCat UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:134983333 AB - The zebrafish brain is the ideal structure to study in vivo neural networks during behavioural experiments. To fully understand the results of these experiments, a precise characterization of the zebrafish brain is necessary. In this thesis I focused on the juvenile forebrain, the pallium in particular. It is suggested to be homologous to the mammalian cerebral cortex, which holds structures such as the hippocampus and amygdala. While this homology has been studied behaviourally and developmentally already, research on a molecular and functional level is still incomplete. By confocal imaging experiments of transgenic lines, I showed that the pallium predominantly contains excitatory neurons, which is similar to the distribution in the mammalian cortex. My results also showed that different types of inhibitory interneurons were present by examining specific interneuron markers such as parvalbumin and somatostatin. Investigating individual neurons in the pallium by whole cell patch clamp recordings showed various types of spontaneous activity patterns in neurons of the Dl and Dm, the homologous structures of the mammalian hippocampus and amygdala, respectively. Furthermore, their morphology corresponded to the distant projecting principal neurons of the mammalian cortex. Lastly, the results of optogenetic experiments to analyse the connectivity within the pallium showed that stimulating inhibitory neurons didn't influence the recorded excitatory neurons, but activating glial cells had a significant effect on their activity. In conclusion, the results of this thesis provide new information about the characteristics of the zebrafish pallium and support the hypothesis that the pallium is homologous to the mammalian cortex. ER -