Week 1 – Neurons and glia

Although cell structures have been addressed in previous courses, the brain structure, much due to its complexity, has some way remained more obscure. This is why it was helpful that in the beginning of the course the basic structure of neural cells were discussed. Although all cells in the body function with the same basic ideas, it was interesting to learn how much neural cells really differ from, for example, red blood cells. For example, the communication between neural cells is more advanced and more precise compared to most of the other cell types. Additionally, neural cells are largely dependent on their communication, whereas red blood cells, work more independently.

It was also refreshing to read about the different parts of the neurons and their functions in English because so far, they have only been introduced in Finnish. Although the subject was quite familiar already, dendritic spines were not. Especially, correlation between mental retardation and dendritic spines was completely new knowledge. In the chapter it was said that some of the neurons have these dendritic spines on their surface but not all of them and that mentally retarded children have fewer and longer spines. This recalled a question that, does it matter in which type of neurons these dendrite spine abnormalities are?  For example, does this abnormality occur more likely in certain type of dendrites with specific receptors?

From the point of view of engineering it was also very interesting to learn about the glia. The glia shows how important some “irrelevant” subjects may be to the neural system, and how science should never neglect the subjects that seem to have no connection with the researched topic. It was actually quite fascinating to learn how the glia insulates the axons much like normal electric wires are insulated. In this matter, insulating wires has become a thing without a proper understanding of the neural system, but with other areas, such as artificial neural networks, the brain itself has become a model for programming.


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