Cellular and Molecular Biology

Monday 04/12/23 h. 2:00 pm - Hybrid Seminar
Fernando De Castro, Cajal Institute, Spanish National Research Council, Madrid, Spain
When Cajal and the Spanish Neurological School showed the World how to study the brain

Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934) was still young and brimming with vital energy when he was tought in the reazione nera (1887), discovered years before by the Italian histologist Camillo Golgi in 1873. Cajal became absolutely passionated about the fine structure of the nervous system and started one of the last true epics of our modern history: the identification of nervous cells and their organisation to form the brain. His discoveries paving the birth of modern Neuroscience (the individuality of neurons/neuron theory, the synapses and the dendritic spines, the dynamic polarization of the neuron, the growth cones and the chemotactic hypothesis on their navigation…) saw the light while he was full professor at Barcelona (1887-1892): all this work was done by Cajal himself, alone, using his own private money to equip his laboratory… at his own home. Reticularists started to be defeated in 1889, but they were too powerful and stubborn to easily surrender the field to Cajal and the growing number of neuronists. Clairvoyant about the dimension of the scientific feat that he decided to face, as soon as he received international recognition and the Spanish authorities realized, Cajal received a modern laboratory in Madrid and started recruiting a handful of brilliant pupils who also contributed with significant and sometimes decisive discoveries to lay the foundations of modern Neuroscience and Neurology. Among many others, the most distinguished were Tello, Achúcarro, Pío del Río-Hortega, de Castro and Lorente de Nó, who worked side by side with El Maestro: the stud of their discoveries represents one of the zeniths of the collective discoveries ever in the History of Science. Their contributions range from the discovery of two of the three main types of glial cells to the description of the reverberant circuits that paved the way to Cybernetics, passing through the first identification of arterial chemoreceptors and the classification of nervous tumors. All together, they are known as the Spanish Neurological School, the School of Madrid or, directly, the School of Cajal. In words of Sherrington: “Never has anyone stated out on a great research more single-handed than at his beginning did Cajal. But as the years went by, if ever scientist had a school it was Cajal”.
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