Dark Neurons: A protective mechanism or a mode of death

Document Type : Review article

Authors

1 Anatomy Department, Medicine Faculty, North Khorasan University of Medical Sciences, Bojnurd. Iran.

2 Department of Pathology, Hospital Universitario Central de Asturias, Oviedo, 33006, Spain

Abstract

More than a century neurons with hyperstaining and compacted feature, dark neurons, have remained as a controversy in
clinical and experimental neuropathology studies. Strictly speaking dark neuron formation is characterized with a series of
morphological features and time-course stainability, but what made them quite bizarre is their non- enzymatic fashion of
formation and reversibility. These enigmatic features led to emerging a new theory based on metastability of a gel- like
structure filling the (neuro) cytoplasm. Although based on the gel- gel theory some mysterious aspects of dark neurons could
be explained, role of receptors and cytoskeleton were not included. In practice, the term dark neuron is often known as the dead
or degenerating neuron while in contrast more than 90-99 percent of dark neurons recover after a short period of time. The
aim of this review is to give a clear explanation on the morphological features of dark neuron and also provide a theoretical
framework in order to bridge between receptor- cytoskeleton and dark neuron behavior.

Keywords

Journal of Medical Histology
Volume 3, Issue 2
December 2019
Pages 125-131

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