This is a confocal image of a mouse hippocampus, specifically the dentate gyrus region of the hippocampus. The red staining is against a protein that is expressed in mature neurons, while the neurons marked with green are transgenically expressing green fluorescent protein (GFP). The reason why you only see a few green neurons as opposed to the red staining which marks so many more neurons is because this transgenic mouse strain’s neurons only express green in neurons that have undergone some form of electrical activity. This image was taken after a learning and memory task, so presumably these green neurons are the ones directly responsible for encoding the new memories that were learned, since they were the ones that have been activated as determined by the GFP expression being turned on in these cells.
Taken from Matsuo et al 2009 Frontiers Behav Neurosci
For those of you who don’t believe there is beauty in science. This is a dissociated hippocampal neuron with an antibody stain against MAP2, a common cell body and dendritic marker. Billions of these guys make up the human brain through trillions of synaptic connections. Neurons really are beautiful.
Image taken from our own lab.
