Editing Dendrite (section)

==History==
The term ''dendrites'' was first used in 1889 by [[Wilhelm His, Sr.|Wilhelm His]] to describe the number of smaller "protoplasmic processes" that were attached to a [[Neuron|nerve cell]].<ref>{{Cite book|title=Origins of neuroscience : a history of explorations into brain function| vauthors = Finger S |publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1994|isbn=9780195146943|pages=44|oclc=27151391|quote=The nerve cell with its uninterrupted processes was described by Otto Friedrich Karl Deiters (1834-1863) in a work that was completed by Max Schultze (1825-1874) in 1865, two years after Deiters died of typhoid fever. This work portrayed the cell body with a single chief "axis cylinder" and a number of smaller "protoplasmic processes" (see figure 3.19). The latter would become known as "dendrites", a term coined by Wilhelm His (1831-1904) in 1889.}}</ref> German anatomist [[Otto Friedrich Karl Deiters]] is generally credited with the discovery of the axon by distinguishing it from the dendrites.

Some of the first intracellular recordings in a nervous system were made in the late 1930s by [[Kenneth S. Cole]] and Howard J. Curtis. Swiss Rüdolf Albert von Kölliker and German Robert Remak were the first to identify and characterize the [[axonal initial segment]]. [[Alan Hodgkin]] and [[Andrew Huxley]] also employed the [[squid giant axon]] (1939) and by 1952 they had obtained a full quantitative description of the ionic basis of the action potential, leading to the formulation of the [[Hodgkin–Huxley model]]. Hodgkin and Huxley were awarded jointly the [[Nobel Prize]] for this work in 1963. The formulas detailing axonal conductance were extended to vertebrates in the Frankenhaeuser–Huxley equations. Louis-Antoine Ranvier was the first to describe the gaps or nodes found on axons and for this contribution these axonal features are now commonly referred to as the Nodes of Ranvier. Santiago Ramón y Cajal, a Spanish anatomist, proposed that axons were the output components of neurons.<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Debanne D, Campanac E, Bialowas A, Carlier E, Alcaraz G | title = Axon physiology | journal = Physiological Reviews | volume = 91 | issue = 2 | pages = 555–602 | date = April 2011 | pmid = 21527732 | doi = 10.1152/physrev.00048.2009 | url = https://hal-amu.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01766861/file/Debanne-Physiol-Rev-2011.pdf | url-status = live | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20200505155633/https://hal-amu.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01766861/file/Debanne-Physiol-Rev-2011.pdf | archive-date = 2020-05-05 }}</ref> He also proposed that neurons were discrete cells that communicated with each other via specialized junctions, or spaces, between cells, now known as a synapse. Ramón y Cajal improved a silver staining process known as Golgi's method, which had been developed by his rival, [[Camillo Golgi]].<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = López-Muñoz F, Boya J, Alamo C | title = Neuron theory, the cornerstone of neuroscience, on the centenary of the Nobel Prize award to Santiago Ramón y Cajal | journal = Brain Research Bulletin | volume = 70 | issue = 4–6 | pages = 391–405 | date = October 2006 | pmid = 17027775 | doi = 10.1016/j.brainresbull.2006.07.010 | s2cid = 11273256 }}</ref>