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Potassium channels

Dendritic shock absorbers

Nature volume 387, pages 851–853 (1997)Cite this article

Mammalian neurons have dendritic trees — branched structures with complex geometries — which have mesmerized researchers for over a century. In 1891, Santiago Ramón y Cajal noticed that whereas sensory neurons point their dendrites towards the periphery, they always send their axons towards the brain. He suggested that a neuron receives information through its dendrites, and that it transmits this information through its axon. But exactly how the dendrites receive and integrate sensory inputs, and transfer them to the axon, is still a mystery.

On page 869 of this issue, Hoffman et al.1 report that they have found potassium channels in dendrites from hippocampal pyramidal neurons. Why is this of general importance? As the authors show, potassium channels play a key role in dendritic excitability, and they may mediate sophisticated computations required for learning.

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Figure 1: Known and postulated channels and receptors in dendritic spines and dendritic shafts of CA1 neurons in the hippocampus.
Figure 2: Hoffman et al.

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  1. Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia University, 1212 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, 10027, New York, USA

    Rafael Yuste

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  1. Rafael Yuste
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Yuste, R. Dendritic shock absorbers. Nature 387, 851–853 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1038/43063

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