History
Santiago Ramon y Cajal, considered the father of modern neuroscience, was one of the first to physically observe growing axons. Moreover, he observed that axons grew in a structured, guided manner. He advocated that axons were guided by chemotactic cues. Indeed, later experiments showed that in both invertebrate and vertebrate models, axons grew along pre-determined routes to create a reproducible scaffold of nerves.
Ramon y Cajal's views faced some competition from those of Paul Alfred Weiss, his contemporary neuroscientist during the 1920s and 1930s. Weiss argued that functional specificity did not depend on specific axon connections, and that nonspecific mechanical cues participated in guiding axons. Subsequent investigations into chemotactics cues that started in the 1970s eventually proved that Ramon y Cajal's initial ideas were intuitive and ahead of his time.
Read more about this topic: Pioneer Axon
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