脳内コミュニケーション

Abstract

Athough as far as I know there are no terms of "neuronal communications" or "communications within the brain" in the references, I applied the terms not only to the interactions between neurons, glial cells, or neuron and glial cell at cellular level, but also to the neuronal connections among neuron groups at system (circuit) level. At cellular level the chemical synapses are naturally major sites of the communications between neurons, and the gap junctions are also the sites of the communication between neurons as well as major sites of the communication between glial cells. Some communications between neuron and glial cell have been suggested and re-estimated recently because of the fact that many receptors for transmitters such as glutamate, acetylcholine, GABA and so on were reported to be expressed in cultured glial cells. The four different brain functions; the voluntary movement, emotion, memory and language which play very important roles on the communications of human being, were selected and introduced briefly from the viewpoint of neuronal communication at system level.