Call for papers: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Dendritic Spine Plasticity: From Molecular Mechanisms to Circuit Dynamics 🤔✍️🇪🇸

Frontiers in Neuroanatomy

Dendritic spines are key postsynaptic compartments where excitatory synaptic signals are received and integrated. Their structural dynamics are tightly linked to synaptic function and plasticity relevant to learning and memory. Understanding how spine morphology and stability emerge and are regulated across spatiotemporal scales requires combining molecular and cellular neuroscience with advanced imaging, biophysical analysis, and computational modeling.

This Research Topic aims to bring together cutting-edge studies that bridge nanoscale mechanisms—such as actin remodeling, membrane dynamics, and scaffold organization—with mesoscopic consequences for synaptic efficacy, network activity, and circuit reconfiguration. We welcome original research articles, reviews, and methodological contributions that illuminate the interplay between structural and functional plasticity across development, experience-dependent adaptation, and neurological and psychiatric disease contexts.

We welcome submissions on the following themes (not limited to):

• Structure–function coupling: Investigations linking morphological parameters (e.g., neck resistance, head volume) to synaptic physiology, compartmentalization, and electrical properties using electrophysiology and glutamate uncaging.
• Imaging and quantification: Application of super-resolution and advanced microscopy pipelines to resolve spine morphology and track remodeling over time, including methodological advances and analysis frameworks.
• New tools for labeling, microscopy, and image analysis: Development of novel biosensors to measure key biochemical and electrical signals in spines in real time, and development of image-processing and analysis tools to improve sensitivity, quantification, and interpretation of imaging data.
• Molecular and biophysical mechanisms: Studies on actin cytoskeletal dynamics, mechanotransduction, and protein synthesis that regulate spine formation, stabilization, and pruning.
• Methodological standardization and taxonomy: Contributions that propose or evaluate standardized metrics for spine classification, automated analysis pipelines, and reproducible quantification methods to address variability across studies.
• Cross-scale integration (synapse to behavior): Research connecting specific patterns of spine plasticity to learning, memory consolidation, or behavioral modification, establishing the “structural engram” of cognitive processes.
• Pathophysiology and spinopathies: Analyses of aberrant spine stability or density in neurological disorders (e.g., Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy), focusing on how structural deficits entail network dysfunction