Definition
Many types of neurons receive synaptic inputs on dendritic spines which are short protrusions of membrane composed of a bulbous “head” connected to the dendrite by a thin “stem” or “neck” (Yuste 2010). Although spines are typically small in size, they occur in high densities along dendrites and may compose 40–60% of the total dendritic surface area. There are two straightforward methods for including spines in computational models of neurons without representing every spine explicitly.
Detailed Description
Spines are widely regarded to serve a biochemical function by providing an isolated compartment where highly localized calcium signals and subsequent reactions can occur. An electrical function was initially proposed by Rall who showed that the steady-state attenuation of a signal from the spine head to the dendrite could be expressed as VSH/VBI = 1 + RSS/RBI, where VSH and VBI are the voltages at the spine head and dendrite, respectively; RSSis the spine stem...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Yuste R (2010) Dendritic spines. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature
About this entry
Cite this entry
Holmes, W.R. (2022). Dendritic Spines. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1006-0_132
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1006-0_132
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-0716-1004-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-0716-1006-0
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesReference Module Biomedical and Life Sciences