[Neuroscience] Re: confusion about cerecellar circuity

[Kalman Rubinson]

On Sun, 28 Feb 2010 12:52:46 -0800 (PST), "Peter H."
<pjwholm from yahoo.es> wrote:

>Now if, when I wrote in the third paragraph of the starting article of
>02-23 that "Between the Purkinje layer and the cerebellar surface you
>can see two types of cells, the bigger ones supposedly Granular and
>the smaller ones supposedly Glia",  you would have responded for
>example with "You are wrong: These are Stellate and Basket cells",
>then I would have understood. But your "This section looks perfectly
>normal to me and comparable to standard descriptions" just didn´t give
>me any hint with regard to where I could have gone wrong.

Y'see.  I was assuming you knew more than you did.

>From the drawings of cerebellar circuity which I have seen, I would
>never have concluded that the granular layer is so dense, that even
>when setting the scale bar at 23 microns I can barely identify a few
>cells within it as such! 

The old joke was that, of the 10^12 neurons in the CNS, 10^13 are
granule cells.

>I haven´t (yet) seen that diagram. But I hope that it is better than
>what I have seen so far, i.e. giving an idea of how dense is the
>cellular population of the granular layer in comparison to that of the
>molecular layer.

Not really.  It is intended to elucidate the circuitry, not the
cytoarchitecture.  Here's a nice set of pix:
http://www.siumed.edu/~dking2/ssb/NM031b.htm

>At any rate: If what I have written in this post is correct, then my
>confusion has been cleared away and there is no real need to talk to
>Prof. Llinas (exept perhaps about this weird population of spherical
>cells). I am almost sure that I got it right this time, but
>nonetheless please tell me whether that is so -or not.

OK.

>And thanks for your patience.

You are welcome.

Kal