!!UPDATE!! This paper is now published at the Journal of Neuroscience and you can also find it here. Congratulations to John Darby Cole and Delane Espinueva, two former undergraduate students who led an incredibly detailed study of the morphological development of adult-born neurons. You might read this and think, hasn’t…
Retroviruses can infect actively dividing neural progenitor cells in the hippocampus and spare non-dividing cells such as mature neurons. With this tool we can selectively label newly born neurons. We can infect neuronal precursor cells at various stages in development and look at a neuron’s morphology at certain ages. This…
Now that I have something to show for it, let this be a formal announcement that I’ve returned to Toronto to join Paul Frankland’s lab (and therefore the larger Josselyn-Frankland group). I’ve always liked their work and one of the techniques I’m excited to learn is the use of viruses to…
Some facts on neuronal excitability: Excitable: the ability to fire action potentials. More excitable: fires action potentials, but more. More LTP: not the same as more excitable. Less inhibition: also not the same as more excitable, though the two may go hand in hand. The Scholarpedia page on neuronal excitability,…
Dendrites are the extensions of neurons that receive incoming information. Neurons have primary dendrites that further split off into secondary and tertiary dendritic branches. On each of these branches are thousands of synaptic connections with axons of neurons carrying incoming information. The result is a dendritic tree that is capable of receiving…
Most studies of adult neurogenesis are concerned with neuronal age. Or at least they should be. This is because new neurons develop from a stage where they have no excitatory synapses to one where they have many. If we assume the traditional view that information is stored at excitatory synaptic…