Talk:Von Economo neuron

Cetacea
At two points in the article, one species is credited with having the highest density of spindle neurons. Since this species changes, this is likely to be invalid. 64.160.118.117 (talk) 00:53, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Autism Link
I suggest removal of the sentance suggesting a link between autism and spindle neuron deficits. While there is a little definitive evidence to either support or deny a link between autism and spindle neurons, the most recent evidence would seem to indicate the absence of such a link. --Robb37 06:22, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

-Done --65.96.189.106 14:16, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

I removed the following passage for two reasons:

"By shunting concentrated neural signals through these giant neurons, and past dampening interference, holonomic focus is thought to be more sharply defined (see 'Holographic Brain Theory')."

First it was sandwiched between passages about John Allman's research, which has nothing to do with the above; second, it was complete nonsense. If this is to be included anywhere in the article, it should be qualified by some explanation and relevant research.

-Ryan

I'd like to suggest a revision. Due to the recent study in Anatomical Studies, the sentences regarding the humpback have been added. For completeness, I offer this quote: "Patrick Hof and Estel Van der Gucht of the Department of Neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York studied the spindle cells said they appear in the same areas (cortex) in humpback whales, fin whales, killer whales, and sperm whales." And this link (http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7005646165). Snakespeare 21:01, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Von Economo Neurons = Spindle Neurons?
There is a page on Von Economo neurons. If these two cells are just synonyms, it would be good to do away with that little article and include the "Von Economo" name here; maybe add some phrase on the history-of-their-discovery. --CopperKettle 10:40, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Support. My understanding is that they are synonymous with the caveat that those trying to push the Von Economo name are associated with Von Economo. Selket Talk 14:13, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
 * But Constantin von Economo (1876–1931) had left us more than 70 years ago. I doubt anyone has any unworthy interest in "pushing" for the name - even John Allman frequently uses the eponymous name for the neuron. Is he Constantine's distant relative? I think not. (0: So, if the names are indeed synonymous, I think it would be best to do a "historical" section and include "Von Economo neuron" as a secondary synonym for spindle neuron - so all those googling for it will not miss Wikipedia. (0: --CopperKettle 15:55, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Support. sallison 22:50, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Support. Assuming they are the same. It needs to to appear as a valid alternate name--I found it being used in a recent Science article (Mar 2 2007 p. 1208-11), which is clearly a prominent publication.--Lostart 22:59, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
 * A merge would of course include a redirect so that someone could search for either term. A good merge would also mention both names in the lead section.  --Selket Talk 23:56, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Article needs to be cleaned up to be consistent with recent info on whales
The existence of spindle neurons in whales is mentioned in the introduction to the article, but the rest of the article ignores this new information. In particular, the section on Evolutionary Significance makes statements that appear to be inconsistent with the existence of spindle cells in whales. Dr.enh 04:14, 9 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I have seen references to other cells in whales that are similar but more evolved. I think that they should be mentioned in the context of functionality with the intent of creating a new page.--John Bessa (talk) 13:41, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

function of spindle cells
i removed mention that spindle cell function has been studied with EEG, PET, an fMRI. Cell types cannot be ascertained with these methods, and any study showing changes in brain areas containing spindle cells due to some cognitive process or behavior cannot demonstrate that spindle cells were involved, as there are many types of cells in these areas. I am also skeptical that anyone has specifically lesioned spindle cells, but I suppose this is theoretically possible so i left it, and indicated that a citation is needed for the whole sentence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.41.55.74 (talk) 15:34, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

conceptualization
From my research five years ago, I believe this is true; if so, it is exceedingly important. I do not carry citations with me for so many years. This paragraph also lacks citations; I think it needs to be fleshed out, but perhaps by someone with laboratory research experience.--John Bessa (talk) 13:37, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
 * become connected with diverse parts of the brain
 * focus on difficult problems (conceptualize, model?)

"Refract"
The article currently states that spindle cells "refract waves of neural signals" which seems to be patent nonsense. They transmit certain signals, refraction makes absolutely no sense here. By the way, the special function of these cells is not at all clear to me from the article. How does the signal processing within the cells differ from other neurons? Icek (talk) 23:02, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Specific studies with no citation
I removed the following section from the article. "Abnormalities in the physiological activity and anatomy of the anterior cingulate cortex are present in most of the major neuropsychiatric disorders. Allman's team has reported reduced ACC size and metabolic activity in  autistic patients, as revealed in structural MRI and PET studies, and activity of the ACC is also reduced in patients, mostly boys, diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, characterized by behavioral and learning disorders." I tried to find these reported studies done by Allman's lab and found no articles that involved MRI, PET, and autism or any study involving ADHD. If someone can cite these findings then please return it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Envygreen333 (talk • contribs) 16:56, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Fix the repeating reference
There are several references which i am not able to fix myself - they repeat twice, sometimes 3 times. Maybe it is possible to make them refer to the same entry? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.83.1.36 (talk) 17:00, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Correction and better reference.
The segment in the first paragraph that says "characterized by a large spindle-shaped soma, gradually tapering into a single apical axon in one direction, with only a single dendrite facing opposite" is incorrect. The word "axon" should read "dendrite": this type of cell has two dendrites pointing in opposite directions. VENs in FI and in LA have an apical dendrite pointing towards the pial surface and another pointing towards the white matter.

A good review (with some new research mixed in) may be found in John M. Allman • Nicole A. Tetreault • Atiya Y. Hakeem • Kebreten F. Manaye • Katerina Semendeferi • Joseph M. Erwin • Soyoung Park • Virginie Goubert • Patrick R. Hof: The von Economo neurons in frontoinsular and anterior cingulate cortex in great apes and humans Brain Struct Funct (2010) 214:495–517 DOI 10.1007/s00429-010-0254-0. An open access copy (as of this date) may be found at http://authors.library.caltech.edu/18781/1/Allman2010p10406Brain_Struct_Funct.pdf

I'd make the changes myself, but have no experience with it and don't want to risk error. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.149.65.1 (talk) 02:45, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Bad Links
The link to TapeiTimes.com in the external links section does not work. The article is no longer available. Alex Washoe (talk) 00:47, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Spindle neuron. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20120716182451/http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2003/12/10/2003079090/print to http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2003/12/10/2003079090/print

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 16:24, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Spindle cell redirects here. Is this correct?
I came to this article from a link at Spindle cell sarcoma where it describes spindle cells as "a naturally occurring part of the body's response to injury". This does not seem to align with the description here (or at Muscle spindle, linked in the hatnote). Any idea where Spindle cell sarcoma (or the Spindle cell redirect) should point? — Theodore Kloba (☎) 18:27, 23 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Yeah, links to "spindle cell"-related subjects were a real mess until I did some cleanup just now, including changing Spindle cell to redirect to a new Spindle cell (disambiguation) page.  (I intentionally left out a few links to subtypes of the linked carcinomas / sarcomas.)
 * I fixed a bunch of newly ambiguated links, but there are still about 15 articles that now (through redirect) link to the disambig. page, all of which appear (based on the titles) to need the cancer-related version of the term, not the neuroanatomy term, spindle neuron / von Economo neuron. No general page for the cancer-related conditions to point those to at the moment.  I need to attend to other tasks, so that's the state I'm leaving things in for now.  --Dan Harkless (talk) 03:43, 29 April 2024 (UTC)


 * A well-meaning soul just changed all those cancer-related articles (except Cystic nephroma, which I just fixed) to point to Spindle neuron, which I had to undo. Looking at WP:INTDABLINK, it looks like the best fix for the moment would be for someone to change all those to instead point explicitly (rather than via the current Spindle cell redirect) to Spindle cell (disambiguation), until there's a better article target.  --Dan Harkless (talk) 00:54, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Spindle neuron vs. von Economo neuron title
I was considering renaming this page to Von Economo neuron per WP:COMMONNAME. At the moment, Google Scholar reports 288 hits for "Von Economo neuron" vs 153 for "spindle neuron", or almost double. That said, von Economo neurons don't even show up in Google Ngram Viewer's corpus of works which ends in 2008, whereas spindle neurons are represented in decades of literature. I'm going to leave it for now but wanted to document this for other editors. Daask (talk) 15:43, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I did this, because none of the sources had 'spindle neuron' in the title, only 'von Economo', and 'von Economo neurons' (1,740) dwarfs 'spindle neurons' (622) in medical studies now in the 21st century. It's the new established name for them. That's why you didn't find it in Ngram Viewer. · • SUM1 • ·    (talk) 19:54, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Spindle neurons claim of convergent evolution
"The appearance of spindle neurons in distantly related clades suggests that they represent convergent evolution". This sounds very wrong - in fact, it implies the opposite to me: a common ancestor of these clades that had already spindle neurons. Such claims need strong evidence, and I don't see any here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.79.192.16 (talk) 03:47, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Dendritic morphology
"characterized by a large spindle-shaped soma (or body) gradually tapering into a single apical axon ... in one direction, with only a single dendrite ... facing opposite." The editor seems to be saying that there is only an axon at the basal pole of the cell, but I think that's wrong: There is a basal dendrite, from the limited descriptions I've seen. The axon may come off the basal dendrite. Also, the editor uses the word "apical" where the correct term is basal -- apical means pointing toward the cortical surface, and I don't think there is any suggestion that the axon goes in that direction. Blixton (talk) 04:44, 16 May 2020 (UTC)