An optimal wire and function trade-off emerges from noisy growth and stochastic retraction during Drosophila class I ventral posterior dendritic arborisation (c1vpda) dendrite development.

The development of Drosophila somatosensory neurons is spared under nutrient deficiency so that they grow more dendrites and make animals more sensitive to environmental stimuli.

The adhesion-GPCR BAI1 shapes dendritic arbors in the hippocampus by associating with Bcr late in development and stimulating its RhoA-GEF activity, resulting in dendritic growth arrest.

Cannabinoids inhibit neuronal expansion and growth through the rapid contraction of actomyosin.

Cryo preservation of brain tissue reveals dendritic spines with thinner necks compared to those prepared with chemical fixation.

Inhibition enhances the spatial specificity of high calcium influx for cooperatively stimulated synapses, suggesting that inhibitory inputs may regulate both synapse-specific and heterosynaptic plasticity to support learning and memory.

Dendrites combine the inputs that they receive from other neurons using calculations that have been optimized for those particular input patterns.

The powerful computational operation of sequence recognition on behavioral timescales of approximately 1 s may emerge from synaptic activity-triggered build-up of biochemical waves in short 20 micron zones on dendrites.

The secretory and recycling components of neuronal dendrites, smooth endoplasmic reticulum and endosomes, were discovered to support synaptogenesis underlying a cellular mechanism of learning and memory in the developing brain.

Combining spatial restriction of channelrhodopsin to the neuronal cell body with two photon excitation and calcium imaging will enable production of high resolution maps of neural circuitry.