Max Planck: New study provides unprecedented insight into the fine details of neuronal communication

Neurons are the basic information processing structures in the brain and consist of three parts: dendrites, responsible for receiving information; axons, responsible for sending information; and the soma, the cell body that contains the nucleus.
For communication between neurons to occur, an electrical impulse, called an action potential, must travel down an axon to its synaptic terminal.
A major technical challenge impeding the direct examination of this process, axonal excitability, is the small diameter of a typical axon – less than 500 nanometers.
Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience researchers have now optimized optical and electrophysiological recordings from single neurons to study axonal excitability with unprecedented detail.
These sophisticated approaches allow for the further understanding of basic principles of neuronal communication.