{"id":22922,"date":"2016-02-29T17:46:49","date_gmt":"2016-03-01T01:46:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/the-case-of-the-silent-synapses-why-are-only-20-of-synapses-active-during-neurotransmission"},"modified":"2017-06-04T20:08:26","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T03:08:26","slug":"the-case-of-the-silent-synapses-why-are-only-20-of-synapses-active-during-neurotransmission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/the-case-of-the-silent-synapses-why-are-only-20-of-synapses-active-during-neurotransmission","title":{"rendered":"The case of the silent synapses: Why are only 20% of synapses active during neurotransmission?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-case-of-the-silent-synapses-why-are-only-20-of-synapses-active-during-neurotransmission.gif\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display:none;\" class=\"\" title=\"FFN200\" src=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-case-of-the-silent-synapses-why-are-only-20-of-synapses-active-during-neurotransmission.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"638\" height=\"337\" \/><\/p>\n<div><b>Using a fluorescent molecule to track neurotransmission of dopamine in mouse synapses, scientists made a puzzling discovery. \u2026 (credit: Sulzer Lab\/Columbia University Medical Center)<\/b><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.columbia.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\">Columbia University<\/a> scientists recently tested a new optical technique to study how information is transmitted in the brains of mice and made a surprising discovery: When stimulated electrically to release <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dopamine\" target=\"_blank\">dopamine<\/a> (a <a title=\"Neurotransmitter\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Neurotransmitter\">neurotransmitter<\/a> or chemical released by <a title=\"Neuron\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Neuron\">neurons<\/a>, or nerve cells, to send signals to other nerve cells), only about 20 percent of synapses \u2014 the connections between cells that control brain activity \u2014 were active at any given time.<\/p>\n<p>The effect had never been noticed. \u201cOlder techniques only revealed what was going on in large groups of synapses,\u201d explained <a href=\"http:\/\/columbianeurology.org\/profile\/dsulzer\" target=\"_blank\">David Sulzer<\/a>, PhD, professor of neurobiology in Psychiatry, Neurology, and Pharmacology at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC). \u201cWe needed a way to observe the neurotransmitter activity of individual synapses, to help us better understand their intricate behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kurzweilai.net\/study-finds-only-a-small-portion-of-synapses-may-be-active-during-neurotransmission\">http:\/\/www.kurzweilai.net\/study-finds-only-a-small-portion-o...ansmission<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Using a fluorescent molecule to track neurotransmission of dopamine in mouse synapses, scientists made a puzzling discovery. \u2026 (credit: Sulzer Lab\/Columbia University Medical Center) Columbia University scientists recently tested a new optical technique to study how information is transmitted in the brains of mice and made a surprising discovery: When stimulated electrically to release dopamine [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":362,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/362"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22922"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68199,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22922\/revisions\/68199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}