The Stellate Cell

Abstract

The stellate cells compose a class of small polymorphous neurons lying in the outer two thirds of the molecular layer. They were described by a number of early authors, FUSARI (1883), PONTI (1897), SMIRNOW (1897), in addition to RAMÓN YCAJAL (1889b), who in his great book on the nervous system (1911) gave SMIRNOW the credit for writing the most detailed and exact account of the different kinds of stellate cells.17 SMIRNOW distinguished two kinds of stellate cells according to the configuration of their axons: (1) cells with long horizontal axons running in the parasagittal plane and (2) cells with highly arborized short axons. RAMÓN Y CAJAL reversed the order of these two classes and, furthermore, divided the short-axoned cells into two subclasses.