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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 Mar 6.
Published in final edited form as: Lancet Neurol. 2008 Aug;7(8):742–755. doi: 10.1016/S1474-4422(08)70165-0

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Excitatory synapse in the CNS. The excitatory neurotransmitter, glutamate, is released from presynaptic vesicles and diffuses across the synaptic cleft to act on two different types of receptors: ionotropic glutamate receptors, which have an intrinsic ion channel, and metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluR), which are coupled to G proteins (α, β, and γ subunits). The three subtypes of ionotropic glutamate receptors include AMPA receptor (AMPAR), NMDA receptor (NMDAR), and kainate receptor (KAR).