Memorias de investigación
Research Publications in journals:
Random positioning of dendritic spines in the human cerebral cortex
Year:2014

Research Areas
  • Artificial intelligence

Information
Abstract
Dendritic spines establish most excitatory synapses in the brain and are located in Purkinje cell?s dendrites along helical paths, perhaps maximizing the probability to contact different axons. To test whether spine helixes also occur in neocortex, we reconstructed ?500 dendritic segments from adult human cortex obtained from autopsies. With Fourier analysis and spatial statistics, we analyzed spine position along apical and basal dendrites of layer 3 pyramidal neurons from frontal, temporal, and cingulate cortex. Although we occasionally detected helical positioning, for the great majority of dendrites we could not reject the null hypothesis of spatial randomness in spine locations, either in apical or basal dendrites, in neurons of different cortical areas or among spines of different volumes and lengths. We conclude that in adult human neocortex spine positions are mostly random. We discuss the relevance of these results for spine formation and plasticity and their functional impact for cortical circuits.
International
Si
JCR
Si
Title
Journal of Neuroscience
ISBN
0270-6474
Impact factor JCR
6,908
Impact info
Datos JCR del año 2012
Volume
34
Journal number
30
From page
10078
To page
10084
Month
SIN MES
Ranking
Participants

Research Group, Departaments and Institutes related
  • Creador: Grupo de Investigación: Computational Intelligence Group
  • Departamento: Inteligencia Artificial
  • Centro o Instituto I+D+i: Centro de tecnología Biomédica CTB