Publication Date:
2001-09-22
Description:
The dendritic arbor of pyramidal neurons is not a monolithic structure. We show here that the excitability of terminal apical dendrites differs from that of the apical trunk. In response to fluorescence-guided focal photolysis of caged glutamate, individual terminal apical dendrites generated cadmium-sensitive all-or-none responses that were subthreshold for somatic action potentials. Calcium transients produced by all-or-none responses were not restricted to the sites of photolysis, but occurred throughout individual distal dendritic compartments, indicating that electrogenesis is mediated primarily by voltage-gated calcium channels. Compartmentalized and binary behavior of parallel-connected terminal dendrites can greatly expand the computational power of a single neuron.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Wei, D S -- Mei, Y A -- Bagal, A -- Kao, J P -- Thompson, S M -- Tang, C M -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2001 Sep 21;293(5538):2272-5.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Departments of Neurology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11567143" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
2-Amino-5-phosphonovalerate/pharmacology
;
Action Potentials
;
Animals
;
Cadmium/pharmacology
;
Calcium/metabolism
;
Calcium Channels/metabolism
;
Calcium Signaling
;
Cesium/pharmacology
;
Dendrites/*physiology
;
Egtazic Acid/analogs & derivatives/pharmacology
;
Glutamates
;
Hippocampus/*cytology/physiology
;
Light
;
Organ Culture Techniques
;
Patch-Clamp Techniques
;
Photolysis
;
Pyramidal Cells/drug effects/*physiology/ultrastructure
;
Quinoxalines/pharmacology
;
Rats
;
Receptors, AMPA/metabolism
;
Receptors, N-Methyl-D-Aspartate/metabolism
;
Tetrodotoxin/pharmacology
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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