Interneurons

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Curator: Tamas Freund. Eugene M. Thomas Klausberger. Interneurons are types of nerve cells, typically found in integrative areas of the central nervous system , whose axons and dendrites are limited to a single brain area. This feature distinguishes them from principal cells, which often have axonal projections outside the brain area where their cell bodies and dendrites are located. While principal cells are mostly excitatory, using glutamate as a neurotransmitter, interneurons most often use gamma-aminobutyric acid GABA to inhibit their targets.

Interneurons

Neurons are the cells that make up the brain and the nervous system. They are the fundamental units that send and receive signals which allow us to move our muscles, feel the external world, think, form memories and much more. Just from looking down a microscope, however, it becomes very clear that not all neurons are the same. So just how many types of neurons are there? And how do scientists decide on the categories? For the spinal cord though, we can say that there are three types of neurons: sensory, motor, and interneurons. Sensory neurons are the nerve cells that are activated by sensory input from the environment - for example, when you touch a hot surface with your fingertips, the sensory neurons will be the ones firing and sending off signals to the rest of the nervous system about the information they have received. The inputs that activate sensory neurons can be physical or chemical, corresponding to all five of our senses. Thus, a physical input can be things like sound, touch, heat, or light. A chemical input comes from taste or smell, which neurons then send to the brain. Most sensory neurons are pseudounipolar, which means they only have one axon which is split into two branches.

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Federal government websites often end in. The site is secure. Understanding brain neural circuits begins with understanding their component parts, the cells that form them. GABAergic interneurons, although a minority of cells within the brain, are critical in the control of inhibition. While understanding their diversity has been a central goal of neurobiologists, this amazing cell type has to date defied a generalized classification system. Here we review data that supports that interneuron complexity within the telencephalon can simplified by viewing them as elaborations of a much more finite group of developmentally specified cardinal classes. Within the forebrain, interneurons possess the largest diversity in morphology, connectivity, and physiological properties 1.

Curator: Tamas Freund. Eugene M. Thomas Klausberger. Interneurons are types of nerve cells, typically found in integrative areas of the central nervous system , whose axons and dendrites are limited to a single brain area. This feature distinguishes them from principal cells, which often have axonal projections outside the brain area where their cell bodies and dendrites are located. While principal cells are mostly excitatory, using glutamate as a neurotransmitter, interneurons most often use gamma-aminobutyric acid GABA to inhibit their targets. Interneurons in the spinal cord may use glycine, or both GABA and glycine, to inhibit principal cells, whereas interneurons of cortical areas or the basal ganglia may release various neuropeptides cholecystokinin, somatostatin, vasoactive intestinal polypeptide, enkephalins, neuropeptide Y, galanin, etc. In some regions, such as the basal ganglia and the cerebellum , principal neurons are also GABAergic. Most types of interneuron innervate predominantly local principal cells. The dominant excitatory drive of interneurons may originate from outside the territory i.

Interneurons

Federal government websites often end in. The site is secure. Understanding brain neural circuits begins with understanding their component parts, the cells that form them. GABAergic interneurons, although a minority of cells within the brain, are critical in the control of inhibition. While understanding their diversity has been a central goal of neurobiologists, this amazing cell type has to date defied a generalized classification system. Here we review data that supports that interneuron complexity within the telencephalon can simplified by viewing them as elaborations of a much more finite group of developmentally specified cardinal classes. Within the forebrain, interneurons possess the largest diversity in morphology, connectivity, and physiological properties 1. Up until ten years ago their classification, with a few notable exceptions 2 , has remained descriptive. Moreover interneuron diversity was often treated either as a quasi continuum or a diversity space with cell types numbering potentially in the hundreds 3 , 4. The last few years of studies have coalesced into the surprising view that interneuron diversity may be fundamentally far more limited.

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The role of the cortical neuron revisited. The functionally relevant classification based on afferent and efferent connectivity is easier to determine in the hippocampus, where afferent pathways and cellular compartments are confined to different laminae. Adding further complexity, analysis of the basal ganglia suggests that only the MGE is a major source of interneuron populations within these structures Interneurons share several common features, but also show considerable diversity. Some neuronal classes show distinct peaks " resonances " in their impedance profiles at characteristic frequencies, which may contribute to their differential involvement in the generation of network oscillations in various frequency bands. Cortex 12 , — They are driven very efficiently by feed-forward excitatory input, as evidenced, for example, by the tight temporal coupling of the firing of PV-containing basket cells in CA1 to characteristic population activity patterns in CA3 in vivo, although many of them also receive input from local principal cells in a feed-back manner. Tan, A. Reprints and permissions. Similarly, the differential expression of functional determinants such as serotonin receptors, in otherwise similar interneuron subtypes are unlikely to represent distinct cardinal classes. On the postsynaptic side, synapses made by PV-positive basket cells are enriched in alpha1 subunit-containing GABAA receptors, while the synapses of CCK-positive basket cells are enriched in alpha2 subunit-containing receptors. Meinecke, D. Google Scholar Peters, A. We are in the midst of an exciting era where new data on the development and function of interneurons are being weekly brought to light.

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While principal cells are mostly excitatory, using glutamate as a neurotransmitter, interneurons most often use gamma-aminobutyric acid GABA to inhibit their targets. Acknowledgements We would like to acknowledge M. Neuroscience 54 , — The functionally relevant classification based on afferent and efferent connectivity is easier to determine in the hippocampus, where afferent pathways and cellular compartments are confined to different laminae. Interneurons targeting specific dendritic regions can selectively gate excitatory input from different sources, thereby changing their relative contributions to the output of the cell. Correlation maps allow neuronal electrical properties to be predicted from single-cell gene expression profiles in rat neocortex. Moreover, it will be interesting to explore whether in addition to being clustered, lineally-related cells are also dispersed and if so to what extent 45 , In addition, a number of factors appear more restricted to specific subtypes. Izhikevich , Editor-in-Chief of Scholarpedia, the peer-reviewed open-access encyclopedia. Unique functional properties of somatostatin-expressing GABAergic neurons in mouse barrel cortex. The so-called Oriens — Lacunosum-Moleculare O-LM interneurons selectively terminate in stratum lacunosum-moleculare in conjunction with excitatory input coming from the entorhinal cortex.