Neuroscience is concerned with the study of the structure and function of the brain and in particular to understand the wiring of neural circuits. In the 19th centrury Spanish researcher Santiago Ramón y Cajal developed methods to stain cells and investigating brain sections under the microscope he found that neurons are polarized cells with a direction. Dendrites are the input and axons the output ends of neurons. This research earned him the Nobel Prize in 1906 and our visualization is inspired by his beautiful drawings.

But more than 100 years after the seminal contributions of Cajal neuroscience is still trying to relate the structure of neurons to their function. Here we show a region of pyramidal neurons with signals travelling from the branched zones of dendrites through the cell body to generate an action potential which travels along the neuronal axon, just as Cajal would have predicted it. The cellular geometry and position determines how synaptic inputs are integrated into the circuit.

Today genetic tools provide new ways to analyse how brain cells are connected with each other and detailed connectivity maps are available for mouse and fly brains. But recently at the Institute of molecular biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of sciences the team around Jürgen Knoblich developed a method to grow organoids from human cells, which resemble minibrains. In these structures researchers can now study the mechanisms which shape neuronal circuits in humans.
#nerve #brain #research
CREDITS
Produced by biolution 2019
Scientific Concept and Text: Stefan Grünert
Animation: Christian Müller
Cut: Bahadir Gökce
Music: Chad Crouch – Algorithms https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ch...

Images:
Neuronal reconstructions are inspired by http://neuromorpho.org/
Ascoli GA, Donohue DE, Halavi M. (2007) NeuroMorpho.Org: a central resource for neuronal mor-phologies. J Neurosci., 27(35):9247-51
Drawing Cerebral Cortex: CSIC, Heirs of P.Río-Hortega, F.Castro,P.Ramón y Cajal, J.Larriva-Sahd
Santiago Ramon y Cajal: Nobel Foundation Archive © nobelprize.org
Mouse brain connectivity map: © Mouse Light of HHMI Janelia Research Campus
Minibrain: © Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences

Brain connectivity maps are available here:
Murine connectivity map http://mouselight.janelia.org/
fly brain connectivity map http://temca2data.org/

free to share under creative commons license CC - BY – NC – ND