Disease
- Excitatory synapses have a fundamental role in information processing within the brain and throughout the peripheral nervous system. Usually situated on dendritic spines, or neuronal membrane protrusions on which glutamate receptors and postsynaptic density components are concentrated, excitatory synapses aid in the electrical transmission of neuronal signals. The physical morphology of synapses is crucial in understanding their function, and it is well documented that the inappropriate loss of synaptic stability leads to the disruption of neuronal circuits and the resulting neurological diseases. Although there are innumerable different causes for different neurodegenerative illnesses, such as genetic dispositions or mutations, the normal aging process, parasitic and viral causes, or drug use, many can be traced back to dysfunctional signaling between the neurons themselves, often at the synapse.
Read more about this topic: Excitatory Synapse
Famous quotes containing the word disease:
“[Love] is the type of disease that spares neither the intelligent nor the idiotic.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“The fantasies inspired by TB in the last century, by cancer now, are responses to a disease thought to be intractable and capricious—that is, a disease not understood—in an era in which medicine’s central premise is that all diseases can be cured.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“The inconveniences and horrors of the pox are perfectly well known to every one; but still the disease flourishes and spreads. Several million people were killed in a recent war and half the world ruined; but we all busily go on in courses that make another event of the same sort inevitable. Experientia docet? Experientia doesn’t.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)