Wilfrid Rall

Wilfrid Rall ( born August 29, 1922 in Los Angeles, California) is an American neuroscientist who has spent most of his career at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. He is considered one of the founders of computational neuroscience and has made significant contributions to the study of the function of the dendrites of nerve cells for the spatial and temporal integration of information. Rall led the cable theory in computational neuroscience and developed neuron models, which were composed of active and passive compartments.

Life

Rall studied physics at Yale University, where he was president of the Yale Political Union 's Labor Party in 1943 and graduated with highest honors. During World War II he was involved in the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago and then worked with KS Cole in Woods Hole together. Then he went to the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, and worked as a graduate student in the later Nobel Prize winner John Carew Eccles, where he remained even after Eccles ' departure to Australia and eventually became head of the department. In 1954 he spent a sabbatical year at University College London in the biophysics department, which was headed by Bernard Katz. After his time in Dunedin, he moved to Bethesda in Maryland and began his work at the National Institutes of Health, where he remained until his retirement in 1994.

Work

Wilfrid Rall scientific research focused on the electrical characteristics of the nerve cells, and in particular, the excitability of the neuronal dendrites. His work has led to a number of significant scientific breakthroughs. This involved in particular the use of the cable in the modeling theory of nerve cells ( Rall 1957, 1959, 1960) that allows biologically realistic, spatially extended neuron models which take account of the measured and morphology. He also presented the first theoretical research on active dendrites ( Rall and Shepherd, 1968) and active dendritic spines ( Rall 1974; Miller, Rall and Rinzel, 1985) on. This work presented the hitherto questioned valid opinion that action potentials can be generated only in the axon of a nerve cell.

Writings (selection )

• Wilfrid Rall: A statistical theory of monosynaptic input-output relations. J. Cell. Comp. Physiol. 46 (1955), 373-411.
• Wilfrid Rall: Experimental monosynaptic input-output relations in the mammalian spinal cord. J. Cell. Comp. Physiol. 46 (1955), 413-437.
• Wilfrid Rall: Membrane time constant of motoneurons. Science 126 (1957), 454
• Wilfrid Rall: Branching dendritic trees and motoneuron membrane resistivity. Exp Neurol. 1 (1959 ), 491-527.
• Wilfrid Rall: Membrane potential transients and membrane time constant of motoneurons. Exp Neurol. 2 (1960), 503-532.
• Wilfrid Rall: Theory of physiological properties of dendrites. Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. 96 (1962), 1071-1092.
• Wilfrid Rall: Theoretical Significance of dendritic trees for neuronal input-output relations. In: R. F. Reiss: Neural Theory and Modeling. Stanford Univ. Press. (1964)
• Wilfrid Rall, GM Shepherd, TS Reese, and MW Brightman: Dendro - dendritic synaptic pathway for inhibition in the olfactory bulb. Exptl. Neurol. 14 (1966 ), 44-56.