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Dendritic Signals Start Out Stronger When They Have Farther to Go

OCT 01, 2000
Without a way to compensate for leaking charge, neurons wouldn’t be able to receive their most distant inputs.

The trillion or so neurons in our brains are input‐output devices. Feeding each neuron with information is a tree‐like body of fine filaments called dendrites, whose trunk originates at the neuron’s cell body or soma. Also attached to the soma is the axon, which carries the processed information to other cells—mostly the dendrites of other neurons via junctions called synapses.

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This Content Appeared In
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Volume 53, Number 10

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