Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Electrical synapse
Summary
An electrical synapse is a mechanical and electrically conductive link between two neighboring neurons that is formed at a narrow gap between the pre- and postsynaptic neurons known as a gap junction. At gap junctions, such cells approach within about 3.8 nm of each other, a much shorter distance than the 20- to 40-nanometer distance that separates cells at chemical synapse. In many animals, electrical synapse-based systems co-exist with chemical synapses.
Compared to chemical synapses, electrical synapses conduct nerve impulses faster, but, unlike chemical synapses, they lack gain—the signal in the postsynaptic neuron is the same or smaller than that of the originating neuron. The fundamental bases for perceiving electrical synapses comes down to the connexons that are located in the gap junction between two neurons. Electrical synapses are often found in neural systems that require the fastest possible response, such as defensive reflexes. An important characteristic of electrical synapses is that they are mostly bidirectional (allow impulse transmission in either direction).
Each gap junction (aka nexus junction) contains numerous gap junction channels that cross the plasma membranes of both cells. With a lumen diameter of about 1.2 to 2.0 nm, the pore of a gap junction channel is wide enough to allow ions and even medium-size molecules like signaling molecules to flow from one cell to the next, thereby connecting the two cells' cytoplasm. Thus when the membrane potential of one cell changes, ions may move through from one cell to the next, carrying positive charge with them and depolarizing the postsynaptic cell.
Gap junction funnels are composed of two hemi-channels called connexons in vertebrates, one contributed by each cell at the synapse. Connexons are formed by six 7.5 nm long, four-pass membrane-spanning protein subunits called connexins, which may be identical or slightly different from one another.
An autapse is an electrical (or chemical) synapse formed when the axon of one neuron synapses with its own dendrites.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.