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Nerve rays on the brain
Nerve rays on the brain Download PDF News & Views . Published: 09 April 2021 . CELL MIGRATION Nerve rays on the brain . Abigail Klopper 1 ? . Nature Physics volume ?17 ,? page 427( 2021 ) Cite this article 34 Accesses 3 Altmetric Metrics details Subjects . Axon and dendritic guidance . Biological physics . Cellular motility . Optical physics . You have full access to this article via your institution. Download PDF Download PDF Building a neural network is no mean feat, and nature has come up with some neat tricks to make it happen. One hurdle is in coordinating the migration of axons, the long slender nerve fibres that neurons use to transmit information. This migration can involve alarming distances — up to metres in some animals — and often requires precise navigation towards a singular target. Now it seems that axons might achieve this goal in much the same way that light traverses different media, as Hadrien Oliveri and colleagues have predicted with their optical ray theory of axon guidance ( Phys. Rev. Lett . 126 , 118101; 2021). Credit: Eva Pillai Cell migration has long been linked to living systems’ ability to sense and respond to chemical gradients, a phenomenon known as chemotaxis. But evidence is mounting that cells also navigate by sensing changes in the rigidity of their surroundings, through the aptly named durotaxis. Oliveri et al. took inspiration from elastic rod theory to come up with a way of describing axonal migration. But in doing so, they noticed that their model was reminiscent of the physics of light propagation: when the nerve fibres approached a change in rigidity, their behaviour across the interface was predicted to follow Snell’s law. Axonal migration is driven by the growth cone, a structure at the tip of each axon, which interacts with its surroundings via traction forces that are sensitive to the stiffness of the substrate. Because axons move in bundles, adhered together by their membranes, as soon as one growth cone sense a change, its force on the substrate differs from that of its neighbour. The sum of all these forces affects the whole bundle, giving rise to durotactic turning, which seems to follow the principles of refraction and reflection. Oliveri et al. were even able to simulate the divergent lensing effects that might emerge when the bundle encounters an obstacle. And by analogy with optical fibres, they imagined the impact a so-called duroduct might have on migration, by creating a soft corridor between stiffer regions. A simulation of axonal migration on a stiffness map obtained from the frog brain (pictured) indicated that durotaxis may indeed contribute to the navigational behaviour seen in vivo. Author information . Affiliations . Nature Physics Abigail Klopper Authors Abigail Klopper View author publications You can also search for this author in PubMed ? Google Scholar Corresponding author . Correspondence to Abigail Klopper . Rights and permissions . Reprints and Permissions About this article . Cite this article . Klopper, A. Nerve rays on the brain. Nat. Phys. 17, 427 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-021-01228-w Download citation Published : 09 April 2021 Issue Date : April 2021 DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-021-01228-w You have full access to this article via your institution. Download PDF Download PDF .
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