ArticleNature protocols2013
Studying synapses in human brain with array tomography and electron microscopy.
Article in Nature protocols, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 68 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
68 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 121 citations in OpenAlex.
- Efficacy and safety of 3-n-butylphthalide for the treatment of cognitive impairment: A systematic review and meta-analysis.CNS neuroscience & therapeutics · 2022Pooled it
- Oligodendrocyte dysfunction in human age-related cognitive decline.Nature medicine · 2026Article
- Digging Deep into Alzheimer Disease: How Electron Microscopy Helps Elucidating Its Pathogenesis.Cellular and molecular neurobiology · 2026Review
- Review
- Patch2MAP combines patch-clamp electrophysiology with super-resolution structural and protein imaging in identified single neurons without genetic modification.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Altered Molecular Composition of a Specific Subset of Prefrontal Cortical Excitatory Synapses in Schizophrenia.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- The synaptic organization of the human temporal lobe neocortex by high-resolution transmission, focused ion beam scanning, and electron microscopic tomography.Anatomical science international · 2025Review
- Volume electron microscopy reveals 3D synaptic nanoarchitecture in postmortem human prefrontal cortex.iScience · 2025Article
- Divergent actions of physiological and pathological amyloid-β on synapses in live human brain slice cultures.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Preservation of cellular structure via immersion fixation in brain banking.Free neuropathology · 2025Article
- The relationship between SV2A levels, neural activity, and cognitive function in healthy humans: A [11C]UCB-J PET and fMRI study.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2024Article
- Parvalbumin interneurons in human ventromedial prefrontal cortex: a comprehensive post-mortem study of myelination and perineuronal nets in neurotypical individuals and depressed suicides with and without a history of child abuse.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2024Article
- Transmembrane protein 97 is a potential synaptic amyloid beta receptor in human Alzheimer's disease.Acta neuropathologica · 2024Article
- Altered amyloid-β structure markedly reduces gliosis in the brain of mice harboring the Uppsala APP deletion.Acta neuropathologica communications · 2024Article
- p-tau Ser356 is associated with Alzheimer's disease pathology and is lowered in brain slice cultures using the NUAK inhibitor WZ4003.Acta neuropathologica · 2024Article
- Synaptic resilience is associated with maintained cognition during ageing.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2023Article
- CLARITY increases sensitivity and specificity of fluorescence immunostaining in long-term archived human brain tissue.BMC biology · 2023Article
- Postmortem changes in brain cell structure: a review.Free neuropathology · 2023Article
- Article
- Bringing synapses into focus: Recent advances in synaptic imaging and mass-spectrometry for studying synaptopathy.Frontiers in synaptic neuroscience · 2023Review
8 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
15 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Postmortem studies of synapses in human brain are problematic because of the axial resolution limit of light microscopy and the difficulty in preserving and analyzing ultrastructure with electron microscopy (EM). Array tomography (AT) overcomes these problems by embedding autopsy tissue in resin and cutting ribbons of ultrathin serial sections. Ribbons are imaged with immunofluorescence, allowing high-throughput imaging of tens of thousands of synapses to assess synapse density and protein composition. The protocol takes ~3 d per case, excluding image analysis, which is done at the end of the study. Parallel processing for transmission electron microscopy (TEM) using a protocol modified to preserve the structure in human samples allows complementary ultrastructural studies. Incorporation of AT and TEM into brain banking is a potent way of phenotyping synapses in well-characterized clinical cohorts in order to develop clinicopathological correlations at the synapse level. This will be important for research in neurodegenerative disease, developmental disease and psychiatric illness.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.