Cajal, the neuronal theory and the idea of brain plasticity

Jairo A Rozo; Irene Martínez-Gallego; Antonio Rodríguez-Moreno

doi:10.3389/fnana.2024.1331666

Cajal, the neuronal theory and the idea of brain plasticity

Front Neuroanat. 2024 Feb 19:18:1331666. doi: 10.3389/fnana.2024.1331666. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Jairo A Rozo^{1

2}, Irene Martínez-Gallego¹, Antonio Rodríguez-Moreno¹

Affiliations

¹ Laboratory of Cellular Neuroscience and Plasticity, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain.
² Iván Pávlov Laboratory, Faculty of Psychology, Los Libertadores University Foundation, Bogotá, Colombia.

Abstract

This paper reviews the importance of Cajal's neuronal theory (the Neuron Doctrine) and the origin and importance of the idea of brain plasticity that emerges from this theory. We first comment on the main Cajal's discoveries that gave rise and confirmed his Neuron Doctrine: the improvement of staining techniques, his approach to morphological laws, the concepts of dynamic polarisation, neurogenesis and neurotrophic theory, his first discoveries of the nerve cell as an independent cell, his research on degeneration and regeneration and his fight against reticularism. Second, we review Cajal's ideas on brain plasticity and the years in which they were published, to finally focus on the debate on the origin of the term plasticity and its conceptual meaning, and the originality of Cajal's proposal compared to those of other authors of the time.

Keywords: Santiago Ramón y Cajal; history; legacy; neuronal theory; plasticity.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Research in the Rodríguez-Moreno Laboratory has been supported by the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER, grants PID2019-107677GB-I00 and PID2022-136597NB-I00) and the Junta de Andalucía and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER, grant P20-0881) to AR-M.