What's the tip of a neuron called?
October 22, 2014 8:56 AM   Subscribe

Please don't tell me I made this up; it's one of my favorite factoids. I remember hearing a radio piece, back in maybe 2011, about the effect that stress has on the tips of neurons.

Those tips were described as being like the bound-together tip of a shoelace, and, like it, will start to unravel over stress and time. My recollection is that sleep is valuable because it helps that tip to knit back together ("knits up the raveled sleeve of care"). I think the name of the tip started with a T, but googling for descriptions or diagrams does not help. Can anyone fill in my blank, please?
posted by mmiddle to Health & Fitness (13 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Are you thinking of the teledendron, maybe?
posted by Solomon at 8:58 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]


Maybe you're thinking of synaptic transmission? (Synapses are a type of connection between neurons.)
posted by sevenless at 9:01 AM on October 22, 2014


Best answer: Are you thinking of telomeres?
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:06 AM on October 22, 2014 [5 favorites]


Best answer: The shoelace analogy is often used for telomeres which knit up the ends of chromosomes. The linked paper might be of interest.

But neuron-terminology-wise, the only thing I can think of is the bouton/presynaptic terminal (releasing neurotransmitters), and postsynaptic density (area on the receiving end of communication).
posted by NikitaNikita at 9:06 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Do you mean telomeres? They're the ends of chromosomes but sound like what you're describing in terms of the effects of stress that shorten them.
posted by loquat at 9:06 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]


dendrite?
posted by exogenous at 9:07 AM on October 22, 2014


Best answer: Are you thinking of telomeres?
posted by redindiaink at 9:08 AM on October 22, 2014


Best answer: Since the vocabulary that you are using suggests neurons and not DNA (ie, telomeres), my guess would be dendrites. Here is an abstract suggesting a stress induces atrophy in apical dendrites of hippocampal CA3 pyramidal neurons. In layman's terms, a person would worry about atrophy to synaptic structures in this area of the brain because of the role in memory.

If you like this sort of stuff, I think that you might find the role of stress in neurogenesis(birth of new brain cells) more interesting. Fred Gage had interesting work in 1998 demonstrating that even elderly humans have new brain cells in - wait for it - the hippocampus. There has been tons of subsequent research looking at factors that increase/decrease neurogenesis using rodent and monkey models.

Here was a quick abstract related to this topic that I pulled up describing factors that decrease neurogenesis (such as stress) and other factors that promote neurogenesis.

If you would like access to one of these papers, memail me and I can probably grab and send you a PDF copy.

Back to work...and stress....
posted by Wolfster at 9:42 AM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]


The shoelace tip is called an aglet fwiw.
posted by idb at 9:45 AM on October 22, 2014 [3 favorites]


Best answer: Telomeres (the ends of DNA strands) are like shoelaces that intertwine, and have been described as unraveling under stress. Lots of articles on that.
posted by blue_wardrobe at 10:24 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]


The very very tip of a neuron is either a dendritic bouton (on the input side), or a synaptic terminal (on the output side).
posted by Dashy at 10:54 AM on October 22, 2014


Response by poster: Thanks, all of you above, for correcting my memory and adding to my knowledge base - it was "telomeres," and not neurons but chromosomes. Whew!
posted by mmiddle at 10:54 AM on October 22, 2014


Although boring, "nerve endings" are the term I hear from neuro people all the time.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 11:29 AM on October 22, 2014


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