Current Events > Have you heard of Dale's law?

(+) Yeah! (+)

While not actually well formalized, the idea is that a neuron releases the same set of neurotransmitters at all of it's axon terminals, regardless of target. It's not 100% true, but it's accurate enough to be useful.

Importantly, it's driven a lot of biophysical modeling of the brain forward. Inhibitory cells have inhibitory influence on all their targets, excitatory cells have excitatory influence on all their targets. This leads to different regimes of balance in the brain that allows for different dynamics. Inhibitory/Excitatory balance is a very simple concept in which the excitatory drive is balanced by recurrent inhibition, allowing for different types of dynamics. This concept has also been used to explore abnormal conditions in the brain, such as epilepsy and autism.

The more you know!

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Was it reported by AP?

ProfessorKukui posted...

Oh... Not as exciting as envisioned. The theory of whether or not there will be pocket sand flung at any moment in time relative to the current situation. That's more my speed.

I expected KotH jokes, tbh.

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Was the release at the axon terminals previously conceptualized differently? It's been a while since my neuro class/ looking at Kandle but I thought once the action potential was reached everything fired downstream..

Ruvan22 posted...

Was the release at the axon terminals previously conceptualized differently? It's been a while since my neuro class/ looking at Kandle but I thought once the action potential was reached everything fired downstream..

It's just that it could have been than different connections have different neurotransmitter release (which we know does happen, but it's the exception, not the rule).

It's also the case, btw, that you can have axon potentials that lead to release at specific terminals and not others. But again this is more rare.

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COVxy posted...

It's just that it could have been than different connections have different neurotransmitter release (which we know does happen, but it's the exception, not the rule).

It's also the case, btw, that you can have axon potentials that lead to release at specific terminals and not others. But again this is more rare.

Ahh cool I didn't realize it was a possibility! Is localized release only in the CNS or something similar?

Well, this was described back in the time when chemical neurotransmission was first discovered. Dale, with Otto Loewi, were the one's behind the experiments with frog hearts in a vat, discovering "vaggusstoff", which translates to vagus substance, the stuff that comes out of a frogs heart when you stimulate the vagus nerve, which turned out to be acetylcholine.

So, it's not like a whole lot was known about the nervous system when this was described.

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You can't just call something like that "Dale's Law"

Like really, Dale?

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So does this prove nofap finally?