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Intercellular communication is part of a complex system of communication that governs basic cellular activities and coordinates cell actions. The ability of cells to perceive and correctly respond to their environment is the basis of growth and development, tissue repair, and immunity as well as normal tissue homeostasis. Errors in cellular information processing are responsible for diseases such as cancer, autoimmunity, diabetes, and neurological and psychiatric disorders. There is substantial drug development concentrating on this and intercellular communication is the basis of much of neuropharmacology. By understanding cell signaling, diseases may be treated effectively and, theoretically, artificial tissues may be yielded. Neurotransmitters/receptors, synaptic structure and organization, gap junctions, neurotrophic factors and neuropeptides are all explored in this volume, as are the ways in which signaling controls neuroendocrinology, neuroimmunology and neuropharmacology. Intercellular Communication in the Nervous System provides a valuable desk reference for all scientists who consider signaling. Chapters offer impressive scope with topics addressing neurotransmitters/receptors, synaptic structure and organization, neuropeptides, gap junctions, neuropharmacology and more Richly illustrated in full color with over 200 figures Contributors represent the most outstanding scholarship in the field, with each chapter providing fully vetted and reliable expert knowledge
Synapse Development and Maturation, the latest release in the Comprehensive Developmental Neuroscience series, presents the latest information on the genetic, molecular and cellular mechanisms of neural development. The book provides a much-needed update that underscores the latest research in this rapidly evolving field, with new section editors discussing the technological advances that are enabling the pursuit of new research on brain development. This volume focuses on the synaptogenesis and developmental sequences in the maturation of intrinsic and synapse-driven patterns. Features leading experts in various subfields as section editors and article authors Presents articles that have been peer reviewed to ensure accuracy, thoroughness and scholarship Includes coverage of mechanisms which regulate synapse formation and maintenance during development Covers neural activity, from cell-intrinsic maturation, to early correlated patterns of activity
The development of the young brain after birth and the emergence of cognitive capacities, mind, and individuality rest on the maturation of a dense net of synaptic connections between neurons. Memory Makes the Brain describes the dramatic, competitive elimination of surplus synapses that occur in the young, maturing brain -- in a process called synaptic pruning that was discovered by pediatric neurologist Peter Huttenlocher in the 1970's at the University of Chicago. Explaining similarities between developmental pruning and learning processes in the adult brain, neurobiologist Christian Hansel offers a unique perspective on brain adaptation and plasticity throughout lifetime, at times weaving in personal accounts and memories. The cellular plasticity machinery that enables learning is known to be affected in brain developmental disorders such as autism. Memory Makes the Brain explains how both maturation and adult synaptic plasticity are deregulated in autism, and how we begin to trace back autism-typical behavioral abnormalities to such synaptopathies.
A unique and fascinating scientific detective story that traces the origins as well as the complex mechanisms of human self-consciousness.
This elegant book presents current evidence on the organization of the mammalian cerebral cortex. The focus on synapses and their function provides the basis for understanding how this critical part of the brain could work. Dr. White and his colleague Dr. Keller have collated an impressive mass of material. This makes the crucial information accessible and coherent. Dr. White pioneered an area of investigation that to most others, and occasionally to himself, seemed a bottomless pit of painstaking at tention to detail for the identification and enumeration of cortical syn apses. I do not recall that he or anyone else suspected, when he began to publish his now classic papers, that the work would be central to an accelerating convergence of information and ideas from neurobiology and computer science, especially artificial intelligence (AI) (Rumelhart and McClelland, 1986). The brain is the principal organ responsible for the adaptive capacities of animals. What has impressed students of biology, of medicine, and, to an extent, of philosophy is the correlation between the prominence of the cerebral cortex and the adaptive "complexity" of a particular spe cies. Most agree that the cortex is what sets Homo sapiens apart from other species quantitatively and qualitatively (Rakic, 1988). This is summarized in the first chapter.
The establishment of polarity is a fundamental process of neural development at multiple levels from synaptogenesis to building up neural circuits. At the circuit level, extrinsic cues, serving as attractive or repulsive signals, guide the pathfinding of axons, regulate the morphogenesis of dendritic arbors, and mediate synapse formation between specific pre- and postsynaptic partners at particular loci. Within a neuron, on the other hand, intrinsic mechanisms instruct the proper polarized subcellular distribution of microtubules, synaptic vesicles, neurotransmitter receptors and channels, etc. The establishments of polarized structures at both levels together ensure the unidirectional signal transmission in the complex neural network and orderly functional nervous system. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, with only 302 neurons whose cell fates, developmental processes and wiring partners well-identified, provides us with a good model organism to understand how polarized structures are built up at both the circuit and cellular levels. At the circuit level, we investigated the synaptic specificity in the C. elegans egg-laying circuit, where presynaptic neurons select one type of muscles, the vm2, as targets and form synapses on the dendritic spine-like muscle arms. Using forward genetic approaches, we found that the Notch-Delta signaling pathway was required to distinguish the target and non-target muscles. APX-1/Delta acts in the surrounding tissues, including the non-target muscle vm1, to activate LIN-12/Notch in the target muscle vm2. LIN-12 cell-autonomously promotes the expression of UNC-40/DCC and MADD-2 in vm2 for muscle arm formation and guidance. Ectopic expression of UNC-40/DCC in the non-target vm1 is sufficient to induce the polarized extension of muscle arms from the non-target vm1. Therefore, intercellular signaling via LIN-12/Notch instructs the formation of dendritic spine-like muscle arms and the specific postsynaptic target selection. We also investigated the polarity establishment at the subcellular level. In particular, we asked how intrinsic sorting machineries separate axonal and dendritic proteins, target them to their specific domains, and achieve polarized protein distributions in the axon and the dendrite. We identified compartment specific di-leucine motifs that are necessary and sufficient to target proteins to either the axon or the dendrite. We showed that the axonal di-leucine motifs are recognized by AP-3, a clathrin-associated adaptor protein (AP) complex. In contrast, dendritic di-leucine motifs are recognized by a different AP, named AP-1. Using both genetics and biochemical approaches, we found that the axonal di-leucine motifs bind to AP-3 with higher affinity than to AP-1, which underlies the sorting specificity. We also showed that axonal and dendritic proteins are packaged and transported on different cargo vesicles derived from the trans-Golgi network (TGN). AP-3 and AP-1 complexes are selectively required for forming the axonal and dendritic vesicles from the TGN, respectively. Thus, the AP-3 and AP-1 dependent sorting machineries instruct the properly polarized distributions of axonal and dendritic cargoes, support the efficient neurotransmission, and ensure normal neuronal activity. In summary, we explored mechanisms for building up the polarized structures at both the circuit level and subcellular levels of the nervous system. Extrinsic and intrinsic cues both contribute to the establishment of neural polarity, which in turn forms the fundamental basis of neural function.
This book models an idealized neuron as being driven by basic electrical elements, the goal being to systematically characterize the logical properties of neural pulses. In order to constitute a system, neurons as pulsating devices may be represented using novel circuit elements as delineated in this book. A plausible brain system is implied by the delineated elements and logically follows from known and likely properties of a neuron. New to electrical science are novel pulse-related circuit elements involving recursive neurons. A recursive neuron, when properly excited, produces a self-sustaining pulse train that when sampled, provides a true output with a specified probability, and a false output with complementary probability. Because of its similarity to the qubits of quantum mechanics, the recursive pulsating neuron is termed a simulated qubit. Recursive neurons easily function as controlled toggle devices and so are capable of massively parallel calculations, this being a new dimension in brain functioning as described in this book. Simulated qubits and their possibilities are compared to the qubits of quantum physics. Included in the book are suggested neural circuits for associative memory search via a randomized process of cue selection, and neural circuits for priority calculations. These serve to select returns from long term memory, which in turn determines one's next conscious thought or action based on past memorized experiences. The book reports on proposals involving electron tunneling between synapses, and quantum computations within neurons. Although not a textbook, there are easy exercises at the ends of chapters, and in the appendix there are twelve simulation experiments concerning neurons. ​