Year: 2014
Type: article
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.
Source: Journal of Neuroscience
Authors: J. Morales, R. Benavides-Piccione, M. Dar, I. Fernaud, A. Rodriguez, L. Anton-Sanchez, C. Bielza, P. Larranaga, J. DeFelipe, R. Yuste
Language: English
Subfield: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Awards: The Human Brain Project, G2723399458, G3207356259, G393177772, G4012432327, Functional consequences of GABAergic inhibition of dendritic spines at puberty, G5259331294, G5702163051, Novel two-photon caged GABA compounds, Imaging Functional Connectivity in Visual Cortex, G7452299184, Novel caged Dopamine compounds
OpenAlex ID: W2004667391