: a grayish or reddish granular cell that is the fundamental functional unit of nervous tissue transmitting and receiving nerve impulses and having cytoplasmic processes which are highly differentiated frequently as multiple dendrites or usually as solitary axons which conduct impulses to and away from the cell body: nerve cellsense 1
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Gut support cells communicate with surprising precision – like brain neurons – using tiny extensions to send instructions to the stem cells responsible for maintaining and healing the intestine.—New Atlas, 24 July 2025 The electrodes sense the brain’s neuron activities and transmit the information to the brain-computer interface (BCI), which translates the signals into speech.—Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, Discover Magazine, 24 July 2025 These genes help lay the scaffolding of the brain itself, orchestrating processes like neuron formation, migration, and early connectivity.—William A. Haseltine, Forbes.com, 21 July 2025 The neuron recordings were able to zoom in to several major brain regions involved in processing smells, confirming findings from animal studies.—Yasemin Saplakoglu, Quanta Magazine, 3 July 2025 See All Example Sentences for neuron
Word History
Etymology
borrowed from German Neuron, borrowed from Greek neûron "sinew, tendon, nerve" — more at nerve entry 1
Note:
Term introduced by the German anatomist Heinrich Wilhelm Waldeyer (Heinrich Wilhelm Gottfried von Waldeyer-Hartz, 1836-1921) in "Ueber einige neuere Forschungen im Gebiete der Anatomie der Centralnervensystems," Berliner klinische Wochenschrift, 28. Jahrgang, no. 28, July 13, 1891, p. 691: "Somit besteht ein Nervenelement (eine 'Nerveneinheit' oder 'Neuron', wie ich es zu nennen vorschlagen möchte), den genannten Forschungsergebnissen … zufolge, aus nachstehenden Stücken: a) einer Nervenzelle, b) dem Nervenfortsatze, c) dessen Collateralen und d) dem Endbäumchen." — "Therefore, in accordance with the cited research results, a nerve element (a 'nerve unit' or 'neuron,' as I would like to suggest as a name), consists of the following parts: a) a nerve cell, b) the nerve process [= axon], c) its collaterals and d) the end tree [= axon terminals]." Waldeyer apparently intended -on to be taken as a suffix, indicating a unit, rather than the Greek neuter singular inflectional ending, as he utilized Neuronen as the plural in the same article. Cf. French neurone and the English variant neurone.
: one of the cells that constitute nervous tissue, that have the property of transmitting and receiving nerve impulses, and that are composed of somewhat reddish or grayish protoplasm with a large nucleus containing a conspicuous nucleolus, irregular cytoplasmic granules, and cytoplasmic processes which are highly differentiated frequently as multiple dendrites or usually as solitary axons and which conduct impulses toward and away from the cell body: nerve cellsense 1
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