image: This is a confocal microscope image of the dendrites of a cortical layer 5 neuron recorded and labeled with a red tracer in a living rat. Invisible here are the thousands of its entangled, neighboring neurons. Each of the tiny 'spines' along this cell's dendrites are the site of a synaptic connection from a single thalamic neuron, like those studied in the paper, or another cortical neuron. This image relates to a paper that appeared in the June 28, 2013, issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by C.M. Constantinople and R.M. Bruno in Columbia University in New York, NY, and colleagues was titled, "Deep Cortical Layers Are Activated Directly by Thalamus." view more
Credit: [Image courtesy of Carl Schoonover, Marissa Ilardi, and Randy Bruno]