The Molecular Epigenetic Lens

Due to their relative stability and, at the same time, environmental sensitivity, neuroepigenetic mechanisms provide information about the metabolic and activation histories of the single neuron in an aggregated manner over time. This chapter examines the different layers of information present in neuroepigenetic data. It discusses the conditions and types of information for single-cell and whole-tissue epigenetic data, the time component of epigenetic data, and the use of genetic information to characterize neuroepigenetic information. In addition, this chapter evaluates the application of information theory approaches to further characterize the information structure of neuroepigenetic data. Finally, it is suggested that functional molecular epigenetic measurements relevant to characterizing neural activity are more likely to be detected at the tissue level rather than at the single-cell level.