Nerve Endings: The Discovery of the Synapse [Hardcover]

Richard Rapport (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2, 2005

Two doctors, the Spaniard Cajal and the Italian Golgi, were racing against each other to find out what brain cells looked like and how they managed to communicate with one another. Both did their most important research in labs set up on their kitchen tables, for lack of better facilities; and both made landmark findings that led to their jointly receiving the 1906 Nobel Prize. Yet one man would find that neurons communicated over a gap, later named the 'synapse', while the other would die convinced that ever brain cell connected to the next. From Parkinson's to neurosurgery, from the mechanics of memory to clinical depression, modern medicine is ever indebted to the one who interpreted the elusive - and rather extraordinary - anatomy of the nerve cell. This is the story not only of one of the nineteenth-century's greatest discoveries but also of the frailty, perseverance, and creativity of human beings.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Like Dava Sobel's Longitude, this slim, engaging volume (part biography, part history) chronicles the discovery of a singular fact that revolutionized a whole field of scientific inquiry. In this case, it was the simple observation that brain cells don't always connect. A space exists between the end of one cell's axon and another's dendrites, and it is across this gap, or synapse, that our nerves communicate. These days the existence of the synaptic gap is taken for granted but, as neurosurgeon Rapport details, at the end of the 19th century, it was the source of great scientific debate-and the cause of a great rivalry between histologists Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramón y Cajal, who shared a Nobel Prize for their work in 1906. Golgi first discovered the method for staining neurons so they could be observed under a microscope, but Cajal perfected the method and argued for the synaptic gap (against "reticulists" who claimed that neurons connected in a seamless web). While detailing a background of science and European history, Rapport focuses on the brilliant and affable Cajal, who labored most of his life in "isolation from the scientific mainstream with no real teachers of stature and few contemporaries with whom he could debate his ideas." For fans of science and medical history, the story of how this determined Spaniard conducted his revolutionary investigations and finally brought his findings to the attention of the rest of Europe will make for fascinating, and occasionally moving, reading.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School–This is a fascinating account of how two isolated and unknown individuals overcame significant obstacles and revolutionized the study of the nervous system more than 100 years ago. Work by Santiago Ramón y Cajal, a Spaniard, and Camillo Golgi, an Italian, led to the identification by Cajal of entities now called synapses that permit communication between nerve cells. Golgi invented a staining procedure, refined by Cajal, that unlocked many secrets of the nervous system. Golgi believed in a reticular structure in which all nerve cells were connected to each other; Cajal demonstrated that this was not correct and established the neuronal theory, the foundation of the current understanding of nervous-system function. The book includes illustrations of nerve-cell structures produced by Cajal and is an excellent introduction to how neural science advanced at the end of the 19th century. Personal considerations and conflict, national and international prejudice, and cultural differences are set against the evolving geopolitical background as Europe slipped toward the First World War. Cajal, Golgi, and others used primitive light microscopes. The volume describes how the earlier work is being continued with such modern techniques as electron microscopy and how current research is examining the role of synaptic dysfunction in Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. Students of the history of science and cultural change should find Nerve Endings interesting and informative. Teens studying biology and medicine will find that the book provides an accessible introduction to understanding the structure and function of the nervous system.–Ted Woodcock, George Mason University, Arlington, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1ST edition (May 2, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393060195
• ISBN-13: 978-0393060195
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #396,759 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars On the shoulders of giants, January 6, 2007

By 

Vladimir Miskovic - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nerve Endings: The Discovery of the Synapse (Hardcover)

In this engaging and well written book, part history of science, part biography, Rapport focuses on the intellectual war that eventually led to the discovery of the neuron theory. The neuron theory - the idea that the nervous system consists of discrete cellular units (neurons) - was one of the key, early discoveries of neuroscience. It has radically accelerated our understanding of how the brain works and it has since had wide-ranging implications, for neurosurgery, psychiatry and other fields.

At heart of the story lie two characters: a charismatic Spanish artist and scientist, Santiago Ramon y Cajal and an equally brilliant, but dogmatic, Italian scientist, Camillo Golgi. These two men (both of whom were awarded the Nobel prize in 1906) were the representatives of two opposing scientific camps who were engaged in an acrimonious intellectual battle during the second half of the 19th century. The point of contention was the structural anatomy of the nervous system. Cajal represented the `neuronist' camp, who claimed that the nervous system consisted of individual cellular units that communicated with one another across tiny gaps (these gaps are called synapses). In contrast, Golgi headed the `reticularists' who held that the entire nervous system was linked in one giant network, that there were no individual cells that were separated from each other.

Besides making many important discoveries in the field of biology (discovery of the Golgi apparatus, the Golgi tendon organ) Camillo Golgi also invented a method for preparing slides of nervous tissue - called silver (Golgi) staining. Silver staining allowed scientists to begin making detailed analyses of nervous tissue for the first time, using light microscopes. Golgi contributed much to the early study of neurohistology, but he confused certain branching neuronal processes (the axon collaterals) for widely ramifying protrusions that he thought connected the entire nervous system in one large network. He used this observation to support his erroneous reticularist theory; at the same time, Cajal was using and improving Golgi's silver staining method to develop the opposing (and as it turns out, correct) theory of neuronal structure. Cajal was a visionary genius, "fascinated by the bewitchment of the infinitely small." His contribution to neuroanatomy is immeasurable. He used his considerable artistic skills to complete extremely detailed drawings of the nervous system that were used in textbooks for years to come. Unlike Golgi, Cajal did not think that the nerve cells were all connected in one diffuse net. He deduced the existence of the synaptic gap from the way that the terminal axons of presynaptic neurons and the dendrites of postsynaptic neurons appeared to fit each other so well (the synapse was not actually seen until the arrival of electron microscopy in the first half of the twentieth century).
But more than helping to clarify the anatomy of the nervous system, Cajal was remarkably prescient in putting forth theories about the physiology of the nervous system as well. He formulated the law of dynamic polarization, which says that the current flow within neurons is unidirectional - electrical signals are received at the dendrites, sent to the cell body and then conducted along the length of the axon. (This law is actually not quite correct but it still remains a basic principle of neural function and is presented in all neuroscience textbooks). Cajal also speculated about the chemical nature of inter-neuronal communication and made predictions about the ways in which neurons grow from their neuroblast precursors.
The significance of Cajal's work was by no means immediate, among other reasons because of national chauvinism. Cajal was a Spaniard and in 19th century science it was mainly Germany, Italy and France who dictated the intellectual landscape. The amazing thing about Cajal is that he made many of his great discoveries working in solitude, his important publications being ignored for years.

This book is a great companion-piece to Elliot Valenstein's "The War of the Soups and Sparks" and should be read prior to that book as it covers chronologically earlier events. Both books will be of great interest to those involved in the neurosciences. Both books also do a great job of showing how science develops in particular sociohistorical and technological contexts and how it is shaped by the personalities and temperaments of its practitioners.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A literary works that entertains, June 15, 2005

By 

Allen Wyler (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Nerve Endings: The Discovery of the Synapse (Hardcover)

NERVE ENDINGS is a jewel of a book written by neurosurgeon Richard Rapport, in his extremely lucid and sometimes humorous style, on the life and contributions of Ramon Cajal,- one of neuroscience's greatest anatomists. Although not an avid reader of biographies, I am a fan of Rapport's writing, having read his numerous contributions to Northwest Review and his book PHYSIAN: THE LIFE OF PAUL BEESON. So, based on this, I ordered NERVE ENDINGS. I was not disappointed. From the introduction to the last chapter I was always entertained, educated, and enthralled. I recommend this book to devotees of fiction and non-fiction alike as an extremely satisfying read.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars History in the making, the discovery of the synapse, February 20, 2006

By 

Thomas Van Groen (Birmingham USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Nerve Endings: The Discovery of the Synapse (Hardcover)

A very well written, and nicely illustrated history of the early years of research on the synapse, illuminating the differences in opinion between Ramon y Cajal and Golgi. Which controversy, in the end, has overshadowed the multitude of work Golgi did.