View source for Dendrite

==History==
The term ''dendrites'' was first used in 1889 by [[Wilhelm His, Sr.|Wilhelm His]] to describe the number of smaller "protoplasmic processes" that were attached to a [[Neuron|nerve cell]].<ref>{{Cite book|title=Origins of neuroscience : a history of explorations into brain function| vauthors = Finger S |publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1994|isbn=9780195146943|pages=44|oclc=27151391|quote=The nerve cell with its uninterrupted processes was described by Otto Friedrich Karl Deiters (1834-1863) in a work that was completed by Max Schultze (1825-1874) in 1865, two years after Deiters died of typhoid fever. This work portrayed the cell body with a single chief "axis cylinder" and a number of smaller "protoplasmic processes" (see figure 3.19). The latter would become known as "dendrites", a term coined by Wilhelm His (1831-1904) in 1889.}}</ref> German anatomist, [[Otto Friedrich Karl Deiters]], is generally credited with the discovery of the axon by distinguishing it from the dendrites.

Some of the first intracellular recordings in a nervous system were made in the late 1930s by [[Kenneth S. Cole]] and Howard J. Curtis. Swiss Rüdolf Albert von Kölliker and German Robert Remak were the first to identify and characterize the [[axonal initial segment]]. [[Alan Hodgkin]] and [[Andrew Huxley]] also employed the [[squid giant axon]] in 1939, and by 1952, they had obtained a full quantitative description of the ionic basis of the action potential, leading to the formulation of the [[Hodgkin–Huxley model]]. Hodgkin and Huxley were jointly awarded the [[Nobel Prize]] for this work in 1963. The formulas detailing axonal conductance were extended to vertebrates in the Frankenhaeuser–Huxley equations. Louis-Antoine Ranvier was the first to describe the gaps or nodes found on axons and for this contribution, these axonal features are now commonly referred to as the [[Node of Ranvier|Nodes of Ranvier]]. Santiago Ramón y Cajal, a Spanish anatomist, proposed that axons were the output components of neurons.<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Debanne D, Campanac E, Bialowas A, Carlier E, Alcaraz G | title = Axon physiology | journal = Physiological Reviews | volume = 91 | issue = 2 | pages = 555–602 | date = April 2011 | pmid = 21527732 | doi = 10.1152/physrev.00048.2009 | url = https://hal-amu.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01766861/file/Debanne-Physiol-Rev-2011.pdf | url-status = live | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20200505155633/https://hal-amu.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01766861/file/Debanne-Physiol-Rev-2011.pdf | archive-date = 2020-05-05 }}</ref> He also proposed that neurons were discrete cells that communicated with each other via specialized junctions, or spaces between cells, now known as a synapse. Ramón y Cajal improved a silver staining process known as Golgi's method, which had been developed by his rival, [[Camillo Golgi]].<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = López-Muñoz F, Boya J, Alamo C | title = Neuron theory, the cornerstone of neuroscience, on the centenary of the Nobel Prize award to Santiago Ramón y Cajal | journal = Brain Research Bulletin | volume = 70 | issue = 4–6 | pages = 391–405 | date = October 2006 | pmid = 17027775 | doi = 10.1016/j.brainresbull.2006.07.010 | s2cid = 11273256 }}</ref>