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The presence of ineffective synapses and the circumstances which unmask them
Abstract
In this paper, we shall show that there are substantial numbers of nerve terminals which are normally ineffective. In the intact animal, occasional signs of the postsynaptic effectiveness of these fibres can be seen under conditions of optimal spatial summation or increased excitability or decreased inhibition. If the normally functioning afferent nerve fibres are blocked or cut, some of the previously ineffective fibres immediately establish an effective drive of cells. If the normal afferents are cut and allowed to degenerate, large numbers of cells begin to respond to new inputs. The presence of ineffective synapses in the adult offers an alternative to sprouting or the opening up of polysynaptic pathways as a possible mechanism to explain plasticity of connections in adult brains.
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Citations
Cited by
Robertson, D., & Irvine, D. R. F. (1989) · Journal of Comparative Neurology · doi:10.1002/cne.902820311 · Cited by 600
Sessle, B. J., Hu, J. W., Amano, N., & Zhong, G. (1986) · Pain · doi:10.1016/0304-3959(86)90213-7 · Cited by 358
Malenka, R. C., & Nicoll, R. A. (1997) · Neuron · doi:10.1016/s0896-6273(00)80362-1 · Cited by 257
Similarities between severe tinnitus and chronic pain
Moller, A. R. (2000) · Journal of the American Academy of Audiology · doi:10.1055/s-0042-1748038 · Cited by 240
G�ldner, F. (1978) · Cell and Tissue Research · doi:10.1007/bf00209231 · Cited by 80
Metadata
- Authors
- Wall, P. D., Barlow, H. B., & Gaze, R. M.
- Venue
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. B, Biological Sciences
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 1977-04-26
- Volume
- 278
- Issue
- 961
- Pages
- 361-372
- ISSN
- 0080-4622 (ISSN-L)
- 2054-0280
- OpenAlex
- W1625407287
- Cited by
- 341
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 2.75
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The presence of ineffective synapses and the circumstances which unmask them. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1098/rstb.1977.0048
- The paper
- Wall, P. D., Barlow, H. B., & Gaze, R. M. (1977). The presence of ineffective synapses and the circumstances which unmask them. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. B, Biological Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.1977.0048
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
