Discovered by the Nobel Prize winner Santiago Ramón y Cajal, although they did not give him the Nobel Prize for the spines, if you see the ramifications that neurons have to receive information (the dendrites), many of these branches develop small, narrower protrusions at the base of the dendrite that at its end: a neuroseta, come on. That is dendritic spines.
And there are many, but they can appear in different amounts and forms. This is important: dendritic spines are dynamic structures whose number and shape vary depending on the stimuli received and neuronal development. This makes them key pieces within the plasticity, of the adaptive capacity that the nervous system has: they are key both in the formation of the brain and in other plastic processes such as the formation of memories; and in summary, dendritic spines are yet another level of regulation of synaptic contacts between cells and the transmission of information from one to another.
