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Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
neurotransmitter

1961, from neuro- + transmitter.

Wiktionary
neurotransmitter

n. (context biochemistry neuroscience English) Any substance, such as acetylcholine or dopamine, responsible for sending nerve signals across a synapse between two neurons.

WordNet
neurotransmitter

n. transmits nerve impulses across a synapse

Wikipedia
Neurotransmitter

Neurotransmitters, also known as chemical messengers, are endogenous chemicals that enable neurotransmission. They transmit signals across a chemical synapse, such as a neuromuscular junction, from one neuron (nerve cell) to another "target" neuron, muscle cell, or gland cell. Neurotransmitters are released from synaptic vesicles in synapses into the synaptic cleft, where they are received by receptors on the target cells. Many neurotransmitters are synthesized from simple and plentiful precursors such as amino acids, which are readily available from the diet and only require a small number of biosynthetic steps for conversion. Neurotransmitters play a major role in shaping everyday life and functions. Their exact numbers are unknown, but more than 100 chemical messengers have been uniquely identified.

Usage examples of "neurotransmitter".

Carbohydrates raise the level of the amino acid tryptophan in the bloodstream, which the brain uses to synthesize serotonin, a neurotransmitter associated with sleep, analgesia, calm, and even the lifting of depression.

The real question is: What causes the stress or the neurotransmitter or the hypothalamus changes?

Use one or more modulatory neurotransmitters to broadcast a message to all relevant parts of the brain that a non-routine circumstance is occurring.

It may be that both types of learned information are encoded in the connections and strengths of connections found on each individual neuron, but in a way which allows one or the other type of information to dominate the response of the neuron to its inputs, according to the effects of modulatory neurotransmitters on those connections.

Cowboy turns his own radar off to discourage homing missiles and navigates on his visual sensors alone, his mind making lightning decisions, neurotransmitters clattering against his headswitches like hail, the interface encompassing the whole flashing universe, the panzer and its systems, the corn thundering under the armored skirts, the blithering chaff, the two hostile privateers burning out of the night.

There are lots of neurotransmitter precursors in this shit, phenylalanine and glutamate.

But because the brain is such a finely equilibrated and dynamic system, with great capacities for self-adjustment and control, the effect of disrupting its biochemistry by flooding it, via a pill, with some drug which affects protein synthesis, or particular neurotransmitters or neuromodulators, is more likely to be the equivalent of trying to retune a radio or reprogram a computer by jamming a screwdriver into its circuit boards.

It is the substantia nigra that supplies the neurotransmitter dopamine to a larger area in the center of the brain, called the striatum, which controls movement and motor skills of the human body.

But the genetic code to produce the telepathy neurotransmitter was there, hidden, frameshifted into something else, in the DNA of every man and woman on earth.

Drugs, biofeedback, tactile and auditory and kinaesthetic stimulation-all carefully calculated for the maximum increase of both the number of neurotransmitters firing signals through the synapses of the brain and of the speed at which the signals raced.

When the best microscopes could barely resolve nerve fibres, this was not a problem: but the devil lies in the detail, and with electron micrographs taking us down to the macromolecular level of cytology, and with biochemistry finally beginning to explain how everything works, the brain was revealed for what it is--a mass of fleshy endocrine cells squirting their neurotransmitter messages at one another in promiscuous abandon.

She damps her enthusiasm self-consciously, her implants hungrily sequestrating surplus neurotransmitter molecules floating around her synapses before reuptake sets in.

Freudians, learning theorists, sociobiologists, drug-oriented psychiatrists, physiologists with interests in hormones, genes and neurotransmitters, and many others may not agree with this highly conscious, cognitive explanation of emotions.

Kandel argues that the interactions and responses of these neurons to artificially administered neurotransmitters represent, in ultimately reduced form, the memory for the reflex itself.

At the very least, in different brain regions and cell ensembles different neurotransmitters will be involved, and there are likely to be other variations in important detail in the biochemical and cellular learning strategies adopted by different species.