Nanoscale Imaging of Synapses: New Concepts and Opportunities

Synapses underlie rapid and flexible neural communication in the brain and they hold the key to understanding higher brain functions in health and disease. Because they are very small and highly dynamic, it is very difficult to study them with traditional techniques. Fortunately, recent ground-breaking advances in optical microscopy (e.g. STED, PALM, STORM, SIM) have greatly improved our ability to image living synapses at the nanoscale, even down to the level of single molecules. The propo...