Information is carried across synapses not by electrical pulses but by chemical messengers called neurotransmitters.
Synapses are the junctions between nerve cells, and their action is central to learning and memory.
In the brain, neurons work together over synapses to recognize a pattern and make the closest match.
But during adolescence the brain then ruthlessly prunes connections between brain cells, synapses, in the grey matter.
And many of the nutrients associated with brain function are known to affect transmission at the synapses.
Together in the right proportions, the cocktail increases the production of fatty constituents and proteins needed for synapses.
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There are some 200 billion nerve cells (neurons) in the brain, linked together by trillions of contacts called synapses.
Synapses once relied on for learning and memory produce less of the chemical neuromodulators used to ferry cognitive messages.
These, he found, require the manufacture of proteins, and the rebuilding of synapses.
Just as in that developmental process, the new synapses seem to enhance memory only once the pruning has taken place.
The idea is that the formation of synapses delays the symptoms of Alzheimer's, but it is not a cure, experts said.
CNN: Nutritional drink, imaging show promise for Alzheimer's
By current means, it could take researchers years to trace the 10, 000 or so synapses that branch from just a single neuron.
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And these synapses are plastic -- they can be modified by learning.
The brain is the ultimate computer, with so many cells and synapses and such intricate circuitry that it defies conventional analytical tools.
The neurons are linked by about 150 trillion connections known as synapses.
Electrical stimulation of these synapses releases a chemical called serotonin and this, in turn, somehow stimulates the manufacture of the memory-forming proteins.
Babies have more synapses, or connections between neurons, than adults, researchers say.
Research suggests some connection between low numbers of synapses in a person's brain and Alzheimer's symptoms such as memory impairment and language deterioration.
CNN: Nutritional drink, imaging show promise for Alzheimer's
These were into the role of a chemical called dopamine in the transmission of signals across the synapses between nerve cells in the brain.
Nerve cells communicate with one another at specialized points called synapses.
What I was feeling was the same complex firing of neurons and synapses that ascribe human emotion to the furry, the liquid eyed, the infantile.
Some estimates suggest that if current technology were used, it would take years to map the roughly 10, 000 synapses that branch from just a single neuron.
During hibernation, the levels of tau protein in a squirrel's hippocampal cells are directly correlated with the loss of synapses but not with the appearance of lesions.
One of the features of a brain with Alzheimer's disease is the loss of synapses, which are junctions between two neurons or between a neuron and a muscle.
CNN: Nutritional drink, imaging show promise for Alzheimer's
Many researchers hold almost precisely the opposite opinion that sleep serves to re-activate synapses that were strengthened during the day, and thus reinforces their strength rather than diminishing it.
These travelling waves occur hundreds of times a night, and most commonly at a frequency, 1 cycle per second, which has been shown to depress the activity of synapses.
They also showed that injecting normal mice with extra ghrelin increased the number of synapses in the hippocampus - and improved the animals' performance in several learning and memory tests.
Just as importantly, the resulting nerve cells were able to conduct electrical impulses and could form the specialised junctions called synapses, by means of which nerve cells talk to each other.
When a sleeper awakens, the strength of each synapse is thus the same relative to all the others, but all synapses are weaker than they were when he went to sleep.
The field is so new that it didn't have a name until 1995, when Indiana University neuroscientist Olaf Sporns dubbed the nervous system's tangle of cells and synapses the "connectome" (pronounced connect-tome).
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