Dendritic Spines Respond to Stress

June 23, 2011 on 16th Annual International "Stress and Behavior" Neuroscience and Biopsychiatry Conference, R.F. Mervis, PhD, from the Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair at the University of South Florida College of Medicine in Tampa, explained that dysmorphic alterations in various dendritic measures include both atrophic and neuroplastic changes that can influence the transfer of information, which in turn will be reflected by changes in learning, memory, or behavior.

The dendritic arbor of a typical neuron makes up over 95% of the volume of the neuron.
Most synapses are directly located on dendritic spines. Therefore, morphologic changes in dendritic branching and spines will sensitively reflect the earliest changes associated with alterations or disruptions of neural circuitry.

Golgi impregnation can evaluate neurons from cortex, hippocampus, cerebellum, striatum and other regions. It yields a picture of dendritic branching (estimated total dendritic length, amount and distribution of dendritic arbor, and complexity of dendritic tree), determines dendritic spine density and configuration, and defines the total branching and spine microcircuitry network for a given cell population and brain region.

Advancing Neuroscience: From Stem Cells to Neurodegenerative Disease

As the world population ages, in part due to the development of treatments and cures for many previously fatal diseases, the incidence of neurodegenerative disorders - particularly those related to old age - is bound to increase.  One promising avenue of therapy getting much press involves the use of multipotent or pluripotent stem cells.
In this booklet we bring together a number of recently published Science papers bridging these two topics, neurodegeneration and stem cell therapy, to present the reader with a timely and practical collection.
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