Role in Disease
- Altered morphology of dentate granule cells
TrkB is responsible for the maintenance of normal synaptic connectivity of the dentate granule cells. TrkB also regulates the specific morphology (biology) of the granule cells and is thus said to be important in regulating neuronal development, neuronal plasticity, learning, and the development of epilepsy. The TrkB regulation of granule cells is important in preventing memory deficits and limbic epilepsy. This is due to the fact that dentate granule cells play a critical role in the function of the entorhinal-hippocampal circuitry in health and disease. Dentate granule cells are situated to regulate the flow of information into the hippocampus, a structure required for normal learning and memory.
- Decreased granule cell neurogenesis
Both epilepsy and depression show a disrupted production of adult-born hippocampal granule cells. Epilepsy is associated with increased production - but aberrant integration - of new cells early in the disease and decreased production late in the disease. Aberrant integration of adult-generated cells during the development of epilepsy may impair the ability of the dentate gyrus to prevent excess excitatory activity from reaching hippocampal pyramidal cells, thereby promoting seizures. Long-lasting epileptic seizure stimulate dentate granule cell neurogenesis. These newly born dentate granule cells may result in aberrant connections that result in the hippocampal network plasticity associated with epileptogenesis.
- Shorter granule cell dendrites
Patients suffering from Alzheimer's have shorter granule cell dendrites. Furthermore, the dendrites were less branched and had fewer spines than those in patients not suffering with Alzheimer's. However, granule cell dendrites are not an essential component of senile plaques and these plaques have no direct effect on granule cells in the dentate gyrus. The specific neurofibrillary changes of dentate granule cells occur in patients suffering from Alzheimer's, Lewy body variant and progressive supranuclear palsy.
Read more about this topic: Granule Cell
Famous quotes containing the words role in, role and/or disease:
“Always and everywhere children take an active role in the construction and acquisition of learning and understanding. To learn is a satisfying experience, but also, as the psychologist Nelson Goodman tells us, to understand is to experience desire, drama, and conquest.”
—Carolyn Edwards (20th century)
“Where we come from in America no longer signifies—it’s where we go, and what we do when we get there, that tells us who we are.
The irony of the role of women in my business, and in so many other places, too, was that while we began by demanding that we be allowed to mimic the ways of men, we wound up knowing we would have to change those ways. Not only because those ways were not like ours, but because they simply did not work.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“There is a disease to which plays as well as men become liable with advancing years. In men it is called doting, in plays dating. The more topical the play the more it dates.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)