Sesión del 12-04-2012 · Alexei Verkhratsky | Webtv RANF | Móvil

The neuronal doctrine, which shaped the development of neuroscience was born from a long-lasting struggle between reticularists (led by Camillo Golgi), who assumed internal continuity of neural networks and neuronists (championed by Santiago Ramon y Cahal), who defined the brain as a network of physically separated cellular entities, defined as neurones. Today, however, we know that integration and information processing in the brain occurs though close interactions of two cellular circuits represented by neuronal networks embedded into internally connected astroglial syncytium. Our understanding of glial function changed dramatically over last two decades. This change concerns the whole concept of how the brain is organized, and how the development, life and death of neural circuits are controlled. There is compelling evidence demonstrating that these are the astrocytes that are creating the compartmentalisation in the CNS, and these are the astrocytes that are able to integrate neurones, synapses, and brain capillaries into individual and relatively independent units. Astroglial syncytium allows intercellular communication route, which permits translocation of ions, metabolic factors and second messengers. The resulting potential for parallel processing and integration is significant and might easily be larger, but also fuzzier, than the binary coded electrical communication within the neuronal networks. The neuronal-glial circuitry endowed with distinct signalling cascades, form a "diffuse nervous net" suggested by Golgi, where millions of synapses belonging to very different neurones are integrated first into neuronal-glial-vascular units and then into more complex structures connected through glial syncytium. These many levels of integration, both morphological and functional, presented by neuronal-glial circuitry ensure the spatial and temporal multiplication of brain cognitive power.