Dendritic spines are important sites of excitatory synaptic transmission and changes in the strength of these synapses are likely to underlie important higher brain functions such as learning and memory. Spines form biochemical compartments for isolating reactions that occur at one synapse from those at other synapses thereby providing a possible way to ensure the specificity of connections bet...

What are they? Dendritic spines are small protrusions that emerge from the dendrites of neurons (Figure 1). Most excitatory synapses in the brain are found on spine heads. Typically, a spine consists of a bulbous head, volume 0.001–1 μm3, at the end of a thin spine neck, diameter around 0.1 μm. A 100 μm length dendrite can contain several hundred spines. The human cerebral cortex is thought to ...

Abstract. Muricate planktonic foraminifera comprise an extinct clade that was diverse and abundant in the Paleogene oceans are widely used palaeoclimate research as geochemical proxy carriers for upper oceans. Their characteristic wall texture has surface projections called “muricae” formed by upward deflection mounding of successive layers test wall. The group is generally considered to have l...

Owing to its completeness, the 1.5 million year old Nariokotome boy skeleton KNM-WT 15000 is central for understanding the skeletal biology of Homo erectus. Nevertheless, since the reported asymmetries and distortions of Nariokotome boy's axial skeleton suggest adolescent idiopathic scoliosis, possibly associated with congenital skeletal dysplasia, it is questionable whether it still can be use...

Adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) is the most common form of scoliosis and usually affects young girls. Studies mostly describe the differences between scoliotic and non-scoliotic girls and focus primarily on a single set of parameters derived from spinal and pelvis morphology, posture or standing imbalance. No study addressed all these three biomechanical aspects simultaneously in pre-brac...

Dendrite and dendritic spine formation are crucial for proper brain function. DISC1-binding zinc finger protein (DBZ) was first identified as a Disrupted-In-Schizophrenia1 (DISC1) binding partner. DBZ is highly expressed in the cerebral cortex of developing and adult rodents and is involved in neurite formation, cell positioning, and the development of interneurons and oligodendrocytes. The fun...

Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors containing alpha7 subunits are widely distributed in the vertebrate nervous system. In the chick ciliary ganglion such receptors generate large synaptic currents but appear to be excluded from postsynaptic densities on the cells. We show here that alpha7-containing receptors are concentrated on somatic spines in close proximity to putative sites of presynaptic ...

In anaesthetised rats, long-term potentiation (LTP) was induced unilaterally in the dentate gyrus by tetanic stimulation of the perforant path. Animals were killed 6 h after LTP induction and dendritic spines and synapses in tetanised and untetanised (contralateral) hippocampal tissue from the middle molecular layer (MML) were examined in the electron microscope using stereological analysis. Th...