Juvenile mossy fibres: Two pipers in the same pub?

摘要

According to an old Hungarian proverb, pub owners should not hire two pipers to play music simultaneously in their establishment. The potential cacophony could disturb the customers and decrease the pub's bottom line. This folk wisdom implies that in a single spatially restricted unit the existence of two different forces fulfilling the same general functional role could lead to unpredictable outcomes, which is not ideal for the proper function of the individual module. This general rule seems to hold true for a large portion of synapses - synaptic contacts using fast neurotransmitters are usually committed to either glutamatergic or GABAergic transmission (but see few notable exceptions: Hnasko & Edwards, 2012).