THE FUNDAMENTAL NEUROLOGICAL FORMS

This page is followed by a page combining the individual forms discussed below into a complete end-to-end circuit diagram of the visual system

BACKGROUND

One of the requirements of the work leading to the completion of that text, PROCESSES IN BIOLOGICAL VISION, was the development of a nominal description of the functional aspects of a neuron. The task was complicate by a number of factors:

Most of the literature used a different definition of functional than needed here. In the literature, functional refers primarily to the genesis and growth of neurons as morphological entities. Little discussion relates to the neuron in its primary role as supporting a signaling function.

There is virtually no discussion in the literature of the fundamental mechanism responsible for achieving the neurons primary role, signaling.

As in most other biological structures at the cytological level, the neuron occurs in a variety of functional adaptations.

There is no recognition in the literature, that the fundamental mechanism responsible for signaling involves a more fundamental morphological structure than the neuron.

This site will present the STANDARDIZED NEURON and a series of modifications to that standard configuration using terminology unfamiliar to some readers. References will be provided at critical points leading to a broader discussion of these points in the main text.

In accordance with the above text, this site will present the neuron as an electrolytic signaling element and all interconnections between elements internal and external to a given neuron will be shown to be based on electrolytics and not the flow of chemical species across boundaries.

Up through the 1960's, the only accepted explanation for the operation of the neural system was based on biochemistry. This biochemistry was quite straight forward. It called for the secretion of a substance by one neuron that crossed a physical space and enervated a second neuron. With the arrival of the low powered electron microscope, the putative process of secretion was assigned to vesicles believed to be present in the external biological membrane, the axolemma of each neuron. How the secreted material enervated the following neuron at its dendrite is still a matter of conjecture and research. The secreted material has been defince as a "neurotransmitter." The precise structure of the neurotransmitter, in terms of ligands and mechanism of operation, is also still a matter of research.

Beginning in the 1930's, more and more data began to be collected electro-physiologically. This led to more and more people suggesting an electronic mechanism supporting the neural function. However, the instrumentation remained crude, the necessary technology was not understood and the advocates of a chemical foundation dominated the field up through the 1970's.

In the last two decades, the instrumentation and technology have been adequate to support a complete electronic foundation for the operation of the neural system. During this period, the electronic hypothesis has gained respectability in the community in spite of the dominant biochemical hypothesis.

In preparing this work, the data base of the neural field has been re-examined and shown to support a completely electronic, technically a electrolytic, foundation underlying the neural system in animals. The interpretation of this database has been aided by the discovery of the Activa, an active electrolytic semiconductor device similar to a man-made transistor. This new device also exhibits "transistor action," a key process in the operation of every synapse. It has also been able to explain in detail every Node of Ranvier and other internal junctions in the neural system. No solution to the operation of these other junctions has ever been offered based on a neurotransmitter hypothesis.

This work replaces the neurotransmitter molecule by an electron (or hole if preferred) at every junction in the neural system. The currently understood principles of quantum physics fully account for the operation of both the neural system and the reported data related to that system based on the proposed substitution. This is true at a level of detail never approached by the chemical hypothesis. The following material will demonstrate this claim. The level of detail has become so great that only the top level view of the operation of the neural system can be presented on line. Referral to the full text is necessary. To aid in this referral, Section numbers of the main work will be provided within square brackets. The top level material has been broken into the following series of sections for convenience.

INDEX

Differentiation of a stem cell into various types of neurons

Introduction to the fundamental neural structures

Topological forms of neural interconnections

Graphic forms of neural interconnections

Fundamental morphological/cytological Neuron

Performance characteristics of the Node of Ranvier

Signal transmission between Nodes of Ranvier

Tabulation of the characteristics of the Neuron

Use of the Patch Clamp Technique in the Laboratory