Mauthner Cell
The Mauthner Cells are a pair of big and easily identifiable neurons (one for each half of the body) located in the rhombomere 4 of the hindbrain in fish and amphibians that are responsible for a very fast escape reflex (in the majority of animals - a so-called C-start response). The cells are also notable for their unusual use of both chemical and electrical synapses.
Read more about Mauthner Cell: Evolutionary History, Plasticity, History of Research
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“It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)