title: Untangling GABAergic wiring in the cortical microcircuit.
abstract: The cerebral cortical microcircuit is composed of pyramidal and non-pyramidal cells and subcortical and cortico-cortical afferents. These constitute a complex wiring structure that remains poorly understood. At least ten non-pyramidal cell subtypes are known. These innervate different target neuronal domains, and have a key role in regulating cortical neuronal activity. Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is a major inhibitory neurotransmitter in the cerebral cortex, and most cortical inhibitory synapses originate from non-pyramidal cells. Therefore, investigating the morphological and functional wiring properties of GABAergic non-pyramidal cells is critical to understanding the functional architecture of the cortical microcircuitry. This review focuses on current understanding of the different roles of inhibitory GABAergic non-pyramidal cell subtypes in cortical functions.
authors.affiliation: Division of Cerebral Circuitry, National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Okazaki, Japan; Department of Physiological Science, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI), Okazaki, Japan; Japan Science and Technology Agency, Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology, Tokyo, Japan. Electronic address: yoshiy@nips.ac.jp.
authors.forename: Yoshiyuki
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kubota
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D000818:Animals; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D006801:Humans; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000166:cytology*; D009433:Neural Inhibition / Q000502:physiology*; D009474:Neurons / Q000145:classification / Q000502:physiology*; D005680:gamma-Aminobutyric Acid / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D005680:gamma-Aminobutyric Acid