: a grayish or reddish granular cell that is the fundamental functional unit of nervous tissue transmitting and receiving nerve impulses and having cytoplasmic processes which are highly differentiated frequently as multiple dendrites or usually as solitary axons which conduct impulses to and away from the cell body: nerve cellsense 1
Recent Examples on the WebInstead, each neuron has a particular receptive field, which is the location and pattern a visual stimulus must have in order to make that neuron fire.—Geoffrey Boynton, Discover Magazine, 8 Aug. 2024 Glutamate is the most abundant neurotransmitter in the brain and helps neurons communicate with each other.—Bruce Gil, Quartz, 22 July 2024 There are also some GLP-1 receptors in neurons, as well as in astrocytes, which are [brain] cells that control the extent of inflammation.—Allison Parshall, Scientific American, 19 July 2024 Consciousness in neuromorphic computers Computer scientists are actively developing neuromorphic computer chips that evade the processing restrictions of Von Neumann computers by approximating the architecture of neurons.—Lindsey Laughlin, Ars Technica, 10 July 2024 See all Example Sentences for neuron
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Word History
Etymology
borrowed from German Neuron, borrowed from Greek neûron "sinew, tendon, nerve" — more at nerve entry 1
Note:
Term introduced by the German anatomist Heinrich Wilhelm Waldeyer (Heinrich Wilhelm Gottfried von Waldeyer-Hartz, 1836-1921) in "Ueber einige neuere Forschungen im Gebiete der Anatomie der Centralnervensystems," Berliner klinische Wochenschrift, 28. Jahrgang, no. 28, July 13, 1891, p. 691: "Somit besteht ein Nervenelement (eine 'Nerveneinheit' oder 'Neuron', wie ich es zu nennen vorschlagen möchte), den genannten Forschungsergebnissen … zufolge, aus nachstehenden Stücken: a) einer Nervenzelle, b) dem Nervenfortsatze, c) dessen Collateralen und d) dem Endbäumchen." — "Therefore, in accordance with the cited research results, a nerve element (a 'nerve unit' or 'neuron,' as I would like to suggest as a name), consists of the following parts: a) a nerve cell, b) the nerve process [= axon], c) its collaterals and d) the end tree [= axon terminals]." Waldeyer apparently intended -on to be taken as a suffix, indicating a unit, rather than the Greek neuter singular inflectional ending, as he utilized Neuronen as the plural in the same article. Cf. French neurone and the English variant neurone.
: one of the cells that constitute nervous tissue, that have the property of transmitting and receiving nerve impulses, and that are composed of somewhat reddish or grayish protoplasm with a large nucleus containing a conspicuous nucleolus, irregular cytoplasmic granules, and cytoplasmic processes which are highly differentiated frequently as multiple dendrites or usually as solitary axons and which conduct impulses toward and away from the cell body: nerve cellsense 1
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