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- Motor Skills
Forced Right-Handedness
When left-handed people were retrained to use their right hand, their brains were also retrained.
25.10.2025
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- Basics
- Anatomy
The Ventricular System
What's hiding in our brains? An alien wearing a helmet! Or a human with ram's horns?
20.09.2025
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- Discover
- Milestones
John Eccles: Across the Gap
John Eccles disproved his own theories. In doing so, he helped to elucidate synaptic transmission.
06.06.2013
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- Glossary
Posterior ventral nucleus
A nucleus of the dorsal thalamus that serves as the main somatosensory thalamic nucleus. The VPL receives somatosensory afferents from the body via the spinal cord (pressure, touch, vibration, proprioception, pain, temperature), while the VPM receives afferents from the head region via the trigeminal nerve. It transmits this information to the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) and thus plays a central role in the awareness of somatosensory stimuli, including pain.
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- Glossary
Substance P
Substance P is a neuropeptide that acts as a neurotransmitter and belongs to the tachykinin family. High concentrations are found in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord, where it is involved in pain modulation.
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- Basics
- Anatomy
The Mesencephalon
Important neurotransmitters, an astonishing array of colors, and a water pipe – that's the midbrain.
20.09.2025
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- Glossary
Cerebrospinal fluid
A clear fluid that fills the ventricular system and bathes the brain and spinal cord in the subarachnoid space, protecting them from impact. Three to five times a day, 100 to 160 ml of fluid is renewed by the choroid plexus. Certain diseases are reflected in the composition of the cerebrospinal fluid.
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- Glossary
Mossy fiber
Mossy fibers are nerve fibers that conduct impulses from the spinal cord and the pontine nuclei to the cerebellum. There they terminate in the granule cell layer. The axons of the granule cells of the dentate gyrus in the hippocampus, which extend to CA3, are also referred to as mossy fibers.
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- Glossary
Betz giant cells
Betz giant cells are particularly large pyramidal cells in the primary motor cortex (area 4). They have very large cell bodies with a diameter of 100 µm and heavily myelinated axons that project directly into the spinal cord. This makes them part of the corticospinal neurons of the pyramidal tract. Although they make up only a small portion of the fibers of the pyramidal tract, they are functionally important for the control of voluntary movements, especially fine motor skills.
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- Glossary
cranial
A positional term – cranial means "towards the head." In relation to the nervous system, it refers to a direction along the neural axis, i.e., forward. In animals (without upright gait), the designation is simpler, as it always means forward. Due to the upright gait of humans, the brain bends in relation to the spinal cord, where cranial also means "upward."
