Douglas Rodney J, Martin Kevan A C
Insitute of Neuroinformatics, UniZ/ETH, Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057 Zürich, Switzerland.
Brain Res Rev. 2007 Oct;55(2):314-28. doi: 10.1016/j.brainresrev.2007.04.011. Epub 2007 May 8.
The relationship between structure and function in the brain has an interesting counterpart in the scientific relationship of Santiago Ramon y Cajal and Charles Sherrington. In their search for the principles of organization of the nervous system, both men met at the synapse. For Sherrington, who coined the word 'synapse', the neuron was the functional unit that integrated excitatory and inhibitory input. For Cajal, the synapse was the explanation for how neurons could be individual elements, yet connected to form circuits. Both men were primarily concerned with local circuits in spinal cord and brain, but imaginatively extrapolated their discoveries on simple circuits to higher cognitive functions. Both men wrote poetically about their discoveries and so provided neuroscience with a rich vocabulary, vivid and memorable images, and concepts that remain part of the currency of 21st century neuroscience.
大脑中结构与功能的关系在圣地亚哥·拉蒙·卡哈尔和查尔斯·谢灵顿的科学关系中有着有趣的对应。在他们探寻神经系统组织原理的过程中，两人在突触处相遇。对于创造了“突触”一词的谢灵顿来说，神经元是整合兴奋性和抑制性输入的功能单元。对卡哈尔而言，突触解释了神经元如何能成为单个元素，却又相互连接形成回路。两人主要关注脊髓和大脑中的局部回路，但富有想象力地将他们在简单回路上的发现推广到更高的认知功能。两人都诗意地描述了他们的发现，从而为神经科学提供了丰富的词汇、生动且令人难忘的形象以及至今仍是21世纪神经科学常用语一部分的概念。
