X-Message-Number: 7903
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 11:19:44 -0800 (PST)
From: John K Clark <>
Subject: Seeing Synapses

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On Wed, 19 Mar 1997 Joseph Strout <>  Wrote:
                                               

        >Golgi stumbled onto a staining technique that filled a few cells
        
        >here and there; not very many, but when it did fill one, it filled
        
        >it completely.  Thus it became pretty obvious that the nervous
        
        >system was composed of cells, and these cells must be joined by
        
        >joining points (i.e. synapses). [...] if we're talking typical human
                >central synapses: way too small for light microscopy.)
                                               

OK, you've convinced me, visible light will not provide good enough 
resolution to see all we want to know. I'll bet ultraviolet could do it 
however. 

Golgi's method was pretty cool, he deduced from a picture that a certain 
object must be there even though the object was not actually in the  picture. 
I wonder if we could ever find indirect methods like that to figure out what  
synapse went where. Of course, we have a problem Golgi didn't have, staining
a living brain with silver salts does not sound very healthy. Maybe we could 
use 2 ultraviolet LASER beams of different frequencies, perhaps the different 
absorption rates would contain enough contrast information. 

Sorry if this sounds rambling, I'm thinking out loud.
                                               
                                             John K Clark     

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