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The spine problem: finding a function for dendritic spines

Why do neurons have dendritic spines? This question—the heart of what Yuste calls “the spine problem”—presupposes that why-questions of this sort have scientific answers: that empirical findings can favor or count against claims about why neurons have spines. Here we show how such questions can rece...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Malanowski, Sarah, Craver, Carl F.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4159972/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25309340
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnana.2014.00095
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author Malanowski, Sarah
Craver, Carl F.
author_facet Malanowski, Sarah
Craver, Carl F.
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description Why do neurons have dendritic spines? This question—the heart of what Yuste calls “the spine problem”—presupposes that why-questions of this sort have scientific answers: that empirical findings can favor or count against claims about why neurons have spines. Here we show how such questions can receive empirical answers. We construe such why-questions as questions about how spines make a difference to the behavior of some mechanism that we take to be significant. Why-questions are driven fundamentally by the effort to understand how some item, such as the dendritic spine, is situated in the causal structure of the world (the causal nexus). They ask for a filter on that busy world that allows us to see a part’s individual contribution to a mechanism, independent of everything else going on. So understood, answers to why-questions can be assessed by testing the claims these answers make about the causal structure of a mechanism. We distinguish four ways of making a difference to a mechanism (necessary, modulatory, component, background condition), and we sketch their evidential requirements. One consequence of our analysis is that there are many spine problems and that any given spine problem might have many acceptable answers.
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spelling pubmed-41599722014-10-10 The spine problem: finding a function for dendritic spines Malanowski, Sarah Craver, Carl F. Front Neuroanat Neuroscience Why do neurons have dendritic spines? This question—the heart of what Yuste calls “the spine problem”—presupposes that why-questions of this sort have scientific answers: that empirical findings can favor or count against claims about why neurons have spines. Here we show how such questions can receive empirical answers. We construe such why-questions as questions about how spines make a difference to the behavior of some mechanism that we take to be significant. Why-questions are driven fundamentally by the effort to understand how some item, such as the dendritic spine, is situated in the causal structure of the world (the causal nexus). They ask for a filter on that busy world that allows us to see a part’s individual contribution to a mechanism, independent of everything else going on. So understood, answers to why-questions can be assessed by testing the claims these answers make about the causal structure of a mechanism. We distinguish four ways of making a difference to a mechanism (necessary, modulatory, component, background condition), and we sketch their evidential requirements. One consequence of our analysis is that there are many spine problems and that any given spine problem might have many acceptable answers. Frontiers Media S.A. 2014-09-10 /pmc/articles/PMC4159972/ /pubmed/25309340 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnana.2014.00095 Text en Copyright © 2014 Malanowski and Craver. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Malanowski, Sarah
Craver, Carl F.
The spine problem: finding a function for dendritic spines
title The spine problem: finding a function for dendritic spines
title_full The spine problem: finding a function for dendritic spines
title_fullStr The spine problem: finding a function for dendritic spines
title_full_unstemmed The spine problem: finding a function for dendritic spines
title_short The spine problem: finding a function for dendritic spines
title_sort spine problem: finding a function for dendritic spines
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4159972/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25309340
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnana.2014.00095
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