ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2023
Synapses without tension fail to fire in an in vitro network of hippocampal neurons.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Synaptic high-frequency jumping synchronises vision to high-speed behaviour.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Mechanobiology of hippocampal neurogenesis: directing neural stem cell fate through physical cues.Frontiers in molecular neuroscience · 2026Review
- Tension shapes memory: computational insights into neural plasticity.Frontiers in computational neuroscience · 2026Article
- Mechanodynamic brain on chip for studying human stem cell derived neuronal networks.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Myosin 2 - A general contractor for the cytoskeleton.Current opinion in cell biology · 2025Review
- Artificial intelligence without restriction surpassing human intelligence with probability one: Theoretical insight into secrets of the brain with AI twins of the brain.Neurocomputing · 2025Article
- Parallelized Mechanical Stimulation of Neuronal Calcium Through Cell-Internal Nanomagnetic Forces Provokes Lasting Shifts in the Network Activity State.Small (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · 2025Article
- Multimodal Characterization of Cortical Neuron Response to Permanent Magnetic Field Induced Nanomagnetic Force Maps.ACS nano · 2024Article
- Nanomagnetic Guidance Shapes the Structure-Function Relationship of Developing Cortical Networks.Nano letters · 2024Article
- Tensed axons are on fire.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Neurons in the brain communicate with each other at their synapses. It has long been understood that this communication occurs through biochemical processes. Here, we reveal that mechanical tension in neurons is essential for communication. Using in vitro rat hippocampal neurons, we find that 1) neurons become tout/tensed after forming synapses resulting in a contractile neural network, and 2) without this contractility, neurons fail to fire. To measure time evolution of network contractility in 3D (not 2D) extracellular matrix, we developed an ultrasensitive force sensor with 1 nN resolution. We employed Multi-Electrode Array and iGluSnFR, a glutamate sensor, to quantify neuronal firing at the network and at the single synapse scale, respectively. When neuron contractility is relaxed, both techniques show significantly reduced firing. Firing resumes when contractility is restored. This finding highlights the essential contribution of neural contractility in fundamental brain functions and has implications for our understanding of neural physiology.
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Registered trials
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