In the healthy-looking neurons (either being protected by overexpressed wt MANF or resistant to etoposide at 48 h treatment), as well as in the neurons that were in the early stages of apoptosis, having condensed chromatin but not yet the other overt signs of apoptosis (shown in Figure 2), MANF was always located in the ER, mainly at its distal submembrane area.
John Allman, a neurobiologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who worked with Hof on the original spindle-neuron discovery, is currently looking for spindle neurons in elephant brains.
From the outside, it looks like neurons; from the inside, it feels like consciousness.
Some researchers have offered evidence for chemical reactions in the eyes sensitive to magnetic signals, while others have looked at neurons in the beak that they thought contained minute amounts of magnetite, a mineral that is affected by magnetic fields.
The neuronlike cells "really look like neurons," says cell biologist Derek van der Kooy of the University of Toronto.
Not only did the resulting cells look like neurons, they acted like them, too: They were able to fire action potentials, a key component that underlies the basics of neuron communication, the team reports.
When they looked for neurons lengthening and retracting their extensions over the course of minutes, they found that about 70% of cells in month-old mice wiggled their axons, but that number dropped to 10% in mice older than 4 months.
They chose two areas involved in reward-related activity -- the ventral tegmental area and nucleus accumbens -- and looked at neurons that rely on the neurotransmitter dopamine to relay signals.
In several instances, cells can look like neurons but have electrical behaviors that indicate otherwise (Fig. 3) [18], [18].
Another advantage is theoretical: the number 212 suggests that we should look for neurons that seem to have, or respond majoritarily to, such a number of active inputs in their linear threshold function.
