More than a century ago, in 1906, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramón y Cajal " in recognition of their work on the structure of the nervous system. " Using the Golgi technique, Cajal discovered and described dendritic spines, which, since then, have received considerable attention. Dendritic spines are the major targets of excitatory syn-ap...

Gold nanofibers have been found to be formed via a heterogeneous electron-transfer reaction at the ionic liquid|water interface. The tips of the nanofibers show a dendritic structure and the dendrites are bundled to nanofibers except around the tips. The roles of the ionic liquid for the dendritic nanofiber formation have been discussed.

Despite intense attention, the mechanisms regulating dendritic spine structure remain elusive. In this issue of Neuron, Jaworski and colleagues explore the morphological consequences of periodic spine incursions of dynamic microtubules and their associated protein, EB3. Microtubules, long thought to be absent from dendritic spines, are capable of controlling spine morphology, opening up a new l...

Background: Dendritic cells (DC) are a key regulator of the immune response, and interferon- beta (IFN-β) is considered an immunomodulatory molecule for DC. Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the ability of IFN-β treated DC to induce cytokine secretion by CD4+ T cells. Methods: Dendritic cells were generated from blood monocytes with granulocyte-monocyte colony-stimulating fac...

Filament occlusion of the middle cerebral artery (MCA) is a well accepted animal model of focal ischemia. Advantages of the model are relatively long occlusion times and a large penumbra region that simulates aspects of human stroke. Here, we use two-photon and confocal microscopy in combination with regional measurement of blood flow using laser speckle to assess the spatial relationship betwe...

Delta-catenin is a brain-specific member of the adherens junction complex that localizes to the postsynaptic and dendritic compartments. This protein is likely critical for normal cognitive function; its hemizygous loss is linked to the severe mental retardation syndrome Cri-du-Chat and it directly interacts with presenilin-1 (PS1), the protein most frequently mutated in familial Alzheimer's di...

Calcium-calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) promotes the maturation of retinotectal glutamatergic synapses in Xenopus. Whether CaMKII activity also controls morphological maturation of optic tectal neurons was tested using in vivo time-lapse imaging of single neurons over periods of up to 5 days. Dendritic arbor elaboration slows with maturation, in correlation with the onset of CaM...