Neuron is a journal covering the technologies/fields/categories related to Neuroscience (miscellaneous) (Q1). It is published by Cell Press. The overall rank of Neuron is 66. According to SCImago Journal Rank (SJR), this journal is ranked 11.377. SCImago Journal Rank is an indicator, which measures the scientific influence of journals. It considers the number of citations received by a journal and the importance of the journals from where these citations come. SJR acts as an alternative to the Journal Impact Factor (or an average number of citations received in last 2 years). This journal has an h-index of 430. The best quartile for this journal is Q1.
Neurons are the computational elements that compose the brain and their fundamental principles of activity are known for decades. According to the long-lasting computational scheme, each neuron sums the incoming electrical signals via its dendrites and when the membrane potential reaches a certain threshold the neuron typically generates a spike to its axon. Here we present three types of experiments, using neuronal cultures, indicating that each neuron functions as a collection of independent threshold units. The neuron is anisotropically activated following the origin of the arriving signals to the membrane, via its dendritic trees. The first type of experiments demonstrates that a single neuron’s spike waveform typically varies as a function of the stimulation location. The second type reveals that spatial summation is absent for extracellular stimulations from different directions. The third type indicates that spatial summation and subtraction are not achieved when combining intra- and extra- cellular stimulations, as well as for nonlocal time interference, where the precise timings of the stimulations are irrelevant. Results call to re-examine neuronal functionalities beyond the traditional framework, and the advanced computational capabilities and dynamical properties of such complex systems.
A neuron is composed of three main elements, a cell body (soma), dendritic trees and an axon. The dendritic trees are responsible for collecting the incoming electrical signals to the soma. Their number is typically greater than one and can exceed hundreds, while a single axon transmits the signal from the soma to the synapses of connected neurons. The diameter of the soma is a few tens of micrometers and is negligible comparing to the length of the dendrites and the axon, which can exceed millimeters, however, the soma is considered a crucial nonlinear computational element in the dynamics of the brain.