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Spatial impact of microglial distribution on dynamics of dendritic spines
Author(s) -
Iida Tadatsune,
Tanaka Shinji,
Okabe Shigeo
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
european journal of neuroscience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.346
H-Index - 206
eISSN - 1460-9568
pISSN - 0953-816X
DOI - 10.1111/ejn.14325
Subject(s) - microglia , neocortex , dendritic spine , neuroscience , synapse , spine (molecular biology) , biology , microbiology and biotechnology , immunology , inflammation , hippocampal formation
Microglia regulate synapse stability and remodeling through multiple molecular pathways. Regulated spatial distribution of microglia within nervous tissues may affect synapse dynamics. Here, we focused on the spatial relationship between microglia and spine synapses in the mouse neocortex and found that the distance between microglial cell bodies ( MCB s) and spines is a critical parameter in spine stability. The region close to MCB s contains microglial processes with higher density and with more spine contacts. This region also shows more extensive exploration of tissue space by microglial processes. To test if the relative positions between MCB s and spines are important for spine stability, we simultaneously imaged spines and microglia in vivo and found negative correlation between spine– MCB distance and spine stability. Optical clearing methods enabled us to record the positions of all microglia in a large cortical volume and indicated their mutually exclusive distribution with similar density across cortical layers. This spatial arrangement of microglia is responsible for the repeated appearance of domains close to MCB s along dendritic arborization. The microglial position was largely independent of other cellular components. These results suggest that the spatial arrangement of microglia is critical for generating repetitive domains of synaptic instability along dendrites, which operates independently of other glial components.