image: This is a pyramidal neuron from mouse prefrontal cortex. The cell has been filled with a red fluorescent dye using a recording pipette, shown attached to the cell body. The dye helps visualize the release of calcium from neurons, post-synapse, at a very fine scale -- the level of the individual dendrite spine. The authors show that inhibitory synapses not previously thought to control calcium signals at such a fine scale actually can exhibit this compartmentalized control. This image relates to a paper that appeared in the May 10, 2013, issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by Chiayu Chiu at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn., and colleagues was titled, "Compartmentalization of GABAergic Inhibition by Dendritic Spines." view more
Credit: [Image courtesy of Chiayu Chiu, Gyorgy Lur, and Michael Higley]