Cells separated by synaptic gaps

Usage examples of neurons.

During these two weeks their brains grow rapidly, and by the time their eyes open almost all the neurons and glia are present, and a myriad of synaptic connections have been formed between the neurons.

If the key methodological step was to be the isolation of neurons and glia, perhaps I could find another route to the same end.

Like the earlier one, they are based on the idea that the brain is composed of ensembles of neurons with multiple connections between them.

So studying the biochemistry of a piece of brain means studying a mix of neurons and glia.

If the real functional business of the brain is going on in the neurons, one should really try to study their properties in isolation from the glia.

In this way he collected a few dozen neurons, and matched them to similar quantities of glia.

During the decade of the 1950s he had painstakingly used the famed Swedish micro-methods to measure the oxygen utilization and the DNA, RNA and protein composition of such isolated cells, comparing the biochemistry of the neurons with that of their surrounding glia.

To get a sense of scale, the black staining cell bodies of chick-brain neurons are on average about 5-10 u.

Sure enough, he claimed, these experiences altered the composition of the RNA and protein of the neurons, but not the glia, that he was studying.

Provided I could find a way of disrupting the brain tissue so gently that instead of breaking the cells completely I merely shook them apart from one another, I could devise a centrifugation regime which, rather than separating subcellular particles, would give me fractions enriched in neurons and glia.

The gentle pressure released the neurons and glia into suspension, and by choosing a combination of gradients and centrifugation speeds, I ended up with two fractions, each enriched in one of the two types of cells.

For instance it dramatically increased the synthesis of proteins in the neurons of the visual regions of the rat brain, though not in other areas such as the motor regions.

The fibrous protein tangles found in the neurons contain a lot of aluminium, though whether the metal causes the tangles or the tangles simply trap the metal is unclear.

The plasticity means that, although individual brain neurons destroyed as a result of a stroke or brain lesion cannot regenerate, at least in adults, the cells around the damaged area do grow and put out more processes, so that there is some compensatory remoulding of the brain.

Focal epilepsy starts with a wave of electrical activity in a relatively small group of neurons, from whence it spreads across much of the brain.