Methods for Special Staining of Synaptic Sites

Abstract

Functional pathways in nervous systems can be traced by electrical recording and by means of morphologic techniques using both light and electron microscopy. Morphology demonstrates the shapes and extensions of nerve cells and the sites where they converge to form functional contacts. The functional significance of such junctions cannot be proposed from a single morphologic investigation. Rather, comprehension of the complexity of functional connections and relationships between nerve cells must be derived by correlating different special morphologic techniques with careful inference from electrophysiologic studies. It should be borne in mind that there is much that functional analysis cannot tell us, and similarly many details revealed in fine structures are still subject to speculation. The most sophisticated morphologic research can give no more than a framework for inferring the possible interactive sites between nerve cells, the synapses.