Characterization of synaptic structural plasticity in mouse spinal dorsal horn neurons

Here, we present a pipeline for the characterization of synaptic structural plas-ticity in mouse spinal dorsal horn (SDH) neurons. We describe steps for the intra-SDH microinjection of the EGFP virus to sparsely label L4 SDH neurons without laminectomy, wide dynamic range neuron imaging, dendritic spine morphometric analysis, and F-actin to G-actin ratio measurement. This protocol can be applied to investigate the synaptic structural plasticity mechanisms in the SDH as well as in the brain.For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Li et al. (2023).1