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Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience pp 1–15Cite as

Nitric Oxide Neuromodulation

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Synonyms

Nitric oxide volume signaling

Definition

Neuromodulators are a class of neurotransmitter that diffuse into the region surrounding an emitting neuron and affect potentially large numbers of other neurons by modulating their responses, irrespective of whether or not they are electrically connected to the modulating neuron. Nitric oxide (NO) is a particularly interesting example of a neuromodulator because of its very small size and gaseous state. The type of modulatory signaling NO is involved in is sometimes known as volume signaling and is in sharp contrast to the connectionist point-to-point electrical transmission picture that dominated thinking about the nervous system for many decades, whereby neural signaling could only occur between synaptically connected neurons.

Detailed Description

Background

The discovery that the toxic gas nitric oxide (NO) is synthesized in biological systems and functions as a physiological signaling molecule earned Robert Furchgott, Louis...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

    Prof. Michael O’Shea

  2. Department of Informatics, Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QG, UK

    Prof. Phil Husbands & Dr. Andrew Philippides

Authors
  1. Prof. Michael O’Shea
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  2. Prof. Phil Husbands
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  3. Dr. Andrew Philippides
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael O’Shea .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Dieter Jaeger

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Florida International University, Miami, Florida, USA

    Ranu Jung

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O’Shea, M., Husbands, P., Philippides, A. (2014). Nitric Oxide Neuromodulation. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_330-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_330-2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-7320-6

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Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Nitric Oxide Neuromodulation
    Published:
    30 May 2014

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_330-2

  2. Original

    Nitric Oxide Neuromodulation
    Published:
    07 February 2014

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_330-1

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