Fig. 2.

Movements of individual dendritic processes are highly rapid and diverse. A,Left, Confocal image of a dendritic branch of an E12 ganglion cell captured at high magnification. Right, Time-lapse images of processes on the same primary dendrite, indicated byarrows in the left panel. The interval between frames is 10 sec. Process 1 is relatively stable. Adjacent processes show motility of different kinds, withprocess 2 exhibiting small changes in its length in the same time that process 3 appears de novoand then retracts completely. Process 4 is an example of a continuous and progressive extension. A movie (filopodia. avi) of the consecutive frames can seen athttp://thalamus.wustl.edu/wonglab/images/filipodia.avi.B, Length-versus-time plots for eight other representative processes from different parts of the cell shown inA (left), illustrating the diversity and rate of dynamic movements.