Questions prompted by reading the book

1. How does a neuron decide how many dendrites, dendritic spines, and axons to build? And what is the distribution of those numbers?
2. What’s the deal with pericellular nests?
3. How does the structural difference between pyramidal neurons and Purkinje neurons beget a functional difference?
4. How come the staining method only affects a few spread-out cells?
5. Why would axonal wrappings be caused by old age or disease? How does the structure of the wrapping relate to attenuated function?
6. Why can astrocytes divide, but most neurons can’t, in the adult brain?
7. Is Cajal’s point about optic nerves crossing true? That it’s necessary to our creation of a complete representation of the visual world?
8. Pigeons have more color vision than we do?
9. What are the neurons that send information back to the retina from the brain?
10. Olfactory bulb has different types of neurons for different kinds of odors? What are different kinds of odors?
11. Thalamus sensory relay turns off when you sleep?
12. How did Cajal put together the vomiting and coughing pathways on p 135? Seems like too much anatomy to be able to see such a clear picture of just the nerve pathways.
13. Dentate gyrus: do we need new neurons in order to form new memories?
14. Wertz et al: Presynaptic networks. Single-cell-initiated monosynaptic...
15. What IS a “chemical message” in the context of a synapse? It must imply action of some kind. But do the different chemicals have different consequences?