This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Granular cell is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
- Granular cell also refers to Juxtaglomerular cell in the kidney
In neuroscience, granule cells refer to tiny neurons (a type of cell) that are around 10 micrometres in diameter. Granule cells are found within the granular layer of the cerebellum, layer 4 of cerebral cortex, the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, and in the olfactory bulb.
While anatomically similar, granule cells in different brain regions are functionally diverse. For instance, olfactory bulb granule cells are GABAergic and axonless, while granule cells in the dentate gyrus have glutamatergic projection axons. Interestingly, these two populations of granule cells are also the only major neuronal populations that undergo adult neurogenesis, while cerebellar and cortical granule cells do not.
Cerebellar granule cells account for nearly half of the neurons in the central nervous system. Granule cells receive excitatory input from mossy fibers originating from pontine nuclei. Cerebellar granule cells send parallel fibers up through the Purkinje layer into the molecular layer where they branch out and spread through Purkinje cell dendritic arbors. These parallel fibers form thousands of excitatory synapses onto the intermediate and distal dendrites of Purkinje cells using glutamate as a neurotransmitter.
Layer 4 granule cells of the cerebral cortex receive driving inputs from thalamus and convey driving inputs largely to supragranular layers 2-3, but also to infragranular layers of the cerebral cortex.
External links
|
||||||||||||||
 |
This neuroanatomy article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 10 October 2008, at 01:55.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Granular cell".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.