About
This is Kai-kai Shen, and you can write to me directly at Kaikai.Shen at gmail dot com, or follow my other feeds, although they may not be synchronised:
About this blog
I use this blog for personal knowledge management — mainly to organize my notes in a searchable and accessible format. No doubt there are errors in these notes, even though I try to correct them whenever I notice any.
About the title
The trisynaptic circuit is formed by three synaptic connections in the hippocampal formation — the perforant path, mossy fibers, and Schaffer collaterals. These connections were first described by Ramón y Cajal (1852–1934), whose meticulous work produced the nice drawing below illustrating the hippocampal circuitry. Functionally, the trisynaptic circuit is a roundabout pathway through which information is relayed onwards, before being consigned into memory — an apt description of the purpose of this blog, where I process external inputs so that they can be retrieved later.
Ramón y Cajal’s drawing of the rodent hippocampal circuitry. The trisynaptic circuit is labelled c: the direct/monosynaptic perforant path, d: the indirect perforant path, j: mossy fibers, K: Schaffer collaterals. (Source: Fig. 479 in Histologie du système nerveux de l’homme et des vertébrés, tr. par L. Azoulay, tom. II, A. Maloine (Paris), 1911, p. 753.)