How Neurons Build and Maintain Their Capacity to Communicate - Neuroscience News
Summary: Researchers reveal how neurons organize and maintain the vital infrastructure that enables seamless nerve transmission. Source: Picower Institute of Learning and Memory The nervous system works because neurons communicate through connections called synapses. They “talk” as calcium ions flow through channels into the “active zone” which is laden with vesicles carrying molecular messages. The electrically charged calcium causes the vesicles to “fuse” to the outer membrane of the presynaptic neuron, releasing its communicative chemical charge to the postsynaptic cell. In a new study, scientists at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT provide some revelations about how neurons organize and maintain this vital infrastructure. “Calcium channels are a major determinant of calcium influx, which then triggers vesicle fusion, so they are important components of the machinery on the presynaptic side that converts electrical signals into chemical synaptic transmissions,”