Conclusion

Abstract

Despite tremendous progress, the most exciting times in dendrite research lie ahead of us. Much of the knowledge we have accumulated to date has been descriptive. Although we have amassed a detailed catalog of structural features and molecular machinery, and discovered a wide repertoire of functional effects imparted by the dendritic tree, how these features allow neuronal networks to generate behavior remains elusive. Two key questions that need to be addressed at this stage are: What computations does each neuron perform within its neuronal network? And which features of dendrites are most relevant to how the neuron performs these computations?.