The Significance of the Granular Layer of the Cerebellum, by Professor Heinrich Obersteiner (English Translation)
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CEREBELLAR CLASSICS
The Significance of the Granular Layer of the Cerebellum, by Professor Heinrich Obersteiner (English Translation) Lazaros C. Triarhou 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The paper is an English translation of Heinrich Obersteiner’s lecture on the significance of the granular layer of the cerebellum, rendered from the original German text that was published under the title Über die Bedeutung der Körnerschichte des Kleinhirns in the Jahrbücher für Psychiatrie und Neurologie (the official organ of the Society for Psychiatry and Neurology in Vienna), volume 30, pages 192–200, 1909, communicated on 21 September 1909 before the Session on Neurology and Psychiatry at the 81st meeting of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Physicians held in Salzburg, Austria. Keywords Cerebellar histophysiology . Granule cell . Purkinje cell . History of neuroscience . Heinrich Obersteiner (1847–1922) The granular layer of the cerebellum—or the rusty-brown layer, as it was formerly called—always attracted the attention of anatomists owing to its very peculiar histological structure, which strikingly differs from the structure of all the other parts of the nervous system. How could anyone provide an anatomical and physiological explanation for that densely packed, not easily measurable quantity of equally sized round cells, in which only the nucleus could be readily recognized, the “finely granulated” small masses—which, as we know, Denissenko [1] mistook for anucleate cells? Nonetheless, through the careful examination, already begun by Gerlach [2], of these “granules”—a term retained for those cells to date—we saw processes emanating from a very thin perikaryon. In most cases, two such processes were described, emanating from the opposite poles. Henle [3] described many such processes as transitioning to a myelinated nerve fiber. On the other hand, the opinion was also expressed that they are not really whole nerve cells, but rather, nucleus-bearing
The article of Cerebellar Classics Commentary is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s12311-020-01188-6. * Lazaros C. Triarhou [email protected] 1
Laboratory of Theoretical and Applied Neuroscience, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece
structures, to some extent merely adjoined to the nervous system, or at best, located at the outer limits of the actual nerve cells. Light came into this darkness in one blow, when Golgi [4–6], with his silver stain, provided data that showed how wrong all the earlier impressions of the granules were, and, at the same time, allowed them to be regarded as true nerve cells with dendrites and axons, albeit poor in cytoplasm. A more precise interpretation of the granules was primarily given by Ramón y Cajal [7–9], as well as by Dogiel [10], Van Gehuchten [11], Hill [cf. 12], Kölliker [12], Retzius [13], and others. However, we now know that they belong to the less differentiated nerve cells; their nucleus is strongly stained with hematoxylin and basophilic dyes. We also know
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