Dendritic Spine - History

History

Dendritic spines were first described at the end of the 19th century by Santiago Ramon y Cajal on cerebella neurons. Ramón y Cajal then proposed that dendritic spines could serve as contacting sites between neurons. This was demonstrated more than 50 years later thanks to the emergence of electron microscopy. Until the development of confocal microscopy on living tissues, it was commonly admitted that spine were formed during embryonic development and then would remain stable after birth. In this paradigm, variations of synaptic weight were considered as sufficient to explain memory processes at the cellular level. But since about a decade, new techniques of confocal microscopy demonstrated that dendritic spines are indeed motile and dynamic structures that undergo a constant turnover, even after birth.

Read more about this topic:  Dendritic Spine

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.
    Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929)

    Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.
    Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)

    The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.
    Emma Goldman (1869–1940)