This beautiful two-photon microscopy image, by Alanna Watt and Michael Hausser, shows a network of Purkinje cells in the cerebellar cortex. Named after the Czech anatomist who discovered them, Purkinje cells are the largest cells in the mammalian brain. They have a planar structure with a highly elaborate dendritic tree which forms hundreds of thousands of synapses with the parallel fibres of cerebellar granule cells, and a single axon which projects down into the deep cerebellar nuclei.
The image comes from a collection inspired by the UCL Neuroscience website, which has just been launched. UCL has a long history of outstanding neuroscience research, and today boasts a large community of world-class neuroscience researchers. The new website brings together their work, in the fields of molecular, developmental, cellular, systems, cognitive, computational and clinical neuroscience, and also includes a list of excellent seminars and events.
Comments
Amazing and beautiful. Thanks for posting.
Posted by: Damien | May 5, 2008 5:34 PM
Looks like a 'brainbow', in monochrome. The extent of magnification and whether the image belonged to a human is something we don't know from the picture. The picture is stunning and can help us unravel the neural circuitry.
Posted by: Amiya Sarkar | May 6, 2008 10:22 AM