Word: neuronal
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Still, discoveries almost amounted to biochemical wizardry. Why, for instance, did drugs control disordered thought and hallucinations in some schizophrenics, yet fail abysmally in others? To unravel such puzzles, researchers turned increasingly to the brain, composed of tens of billions of nerve cells called neurons. Passing electrical impulses from one part of the brain to another, these elongated, finger-like cells communicate with one another across junctions or gaps-synapses-by the release of chemicals called neurotransmitters. As these chemical broad jumpers leap across a synapse, carrying their message, they attach themselves to the neighboring cell, triggering a fresh electrical...
...explained that the human mind contains so many neurons that direct observation of neuron behavior is difficult...
According to Dr. Richard Wurtman of M.I.T. and Dr. Nicholas Zervas of Beth Israel Hospital and Harvard Medical School, a large part of stroke injury may be caused by imbalances in the brain's neurotransmitters, the chemicals that carry nerve impulses from one neuron, or brain cell, to another. The doctors base their theory on experiments in which Neurosurgeon Zervas produced massive strokes in 13 monkeys by cutting off blood flow-and thus oxygen-to the left sides of their brains. Examining the brains afterward, he and Wurtman found that there were dramatic changes in the levels of dopamine...