Granule cell

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Drawing of Purkinje cells (A) and granule cells (B) from pigeon cerebellum by Santiago Ramón y Cajal, 1899. Instituto Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Madrid, Spain.

In neuroscience, granule cells refer to tiny neurons (a type of cell) that are around 10 micrometres in diameter. Granule cells are found within the granular layer of the cerebellum, layer 4 of cerebral cortex, the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, and in the olfactory bulb.

While anatomically similar, granule cells in different brain regions are functionally diverse. For instance, olfactory bulb granule cells are GABAergic and axonless, while granule cells in the dentate gyrus have glutamatergic projection axons. Interestingly, these two populations of granule cells are also the only major neuronal populations that undergo adult neurogenesis, while cerebellar and cortical granule cells do not.

Cerebellar granule cells account for nearly half of the neurons in the central nervous system. Granule cells receive excitatory input from mossy fibers originating from pontine nuclei. Cerebellar granule cells send parallel fibers up through the Purkinje layer into the molecular layer where they branch out and spread through Purkinje cell dendritic arbors. These parallel fibers form thousands of excitatory synapses with Purkinje cells.

Layer 4 granule cells of the cerebral cortex receive driving inputs from thalamus and convey driving inputs largely to supragranular layers 2-3, but also to infragranular layers of the cerebral cortex.