Emergence of the Concept of Transmitter Release at Peripheral and Central Synapses

Over ninety years ago Charles Sherrington gave his Silliman Lectures at Yale University which were later published as The Integrative Action of the Nervous System (Sherrington, 1906). In that great work Sherrington laid the conceptual foundations for much that was to dominate research on the central nervous system for the rest of the century. Sherrington had begun his studies on the central nervous system at Cambridge in the physiological laboratory of John Langley and later at Liverpool. In his Silliman Lectures Sherrington pointed out that:

In view, therefore, of the probable importance physiologically of this mode of nexus between neurone and neurone it is convenient to have a term for it. The term introduced has been ‘synapse.’