Cerebral Cortex, Vol. 9, No. 8, 776-782,
December 1999
© 1999 Oxford University Press
Feature Article: Cajal–Retzius Cell Physiology: Just in Time to Bridge the 20th Century
The Psychiatric Institute, Department of Psychiatry, The University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60612, USA
Address correspondence to J.-M. Mienville, The Psychiatric Institute, Department of Psychiatry; m/c 912, The University of Illinois at Chicago, 1601 West Taylor Street, Chicago, IL 60612, USA. Email: jmm{at}psych.uic.edu.
Cajal–Retzius (CR) cells were discovered at the end of the 19th century but, surprisingly, the exploration of their physiological properties is only now beginning, as we near the end of the 20th century. A few papers addressing these properties have appeared recently, but incomplete data generally give the arguably misleading impression that CR cells are similar to other neocortical neurons, and therefore may perform analogous functions. It is one of the motives of this review to dispel such conceptions. Although CR cells display features of ‘regular’ neurons, including excitability and responsiveness to neurotransmitters, their function is probably limited to the primary implementation of cortical circuits. A strong indication in support of this idea is the fact that CR cells appear at the onset of neocorticogenesis and disappear at the end of neuronal migration.
* Most of the data and descriptionsprovided in this paper are from rodents. Care should be taken when extrapolating to or from primate CR cells, whose morphology, physiology and fate may be widely different (Marín-padilla, 1984; Meyer et al., 1998).
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