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Glite Dictionary
🧠 Using glutamate 🧬 A nerve cell
glutamatergic

glutamatergic

9.9
A nerve cell that uses glutamate to send messages to other nerve cells
  • noun
  • /ɡluːtəˈmeɪtərdʒɪk/
  • Specialized
: neurona glutamatérgica
  • Researchers discovered a new type of glutamatergic neuron that may play a role in memory formation.

Examples

  • The study focused on how glutamatergic cells interact with other neurotransmitter systems in the brain.

  • So kind of social withdrawal and and those mice in their brains, they have hyper hyperactivity of glutamatergic neuronal networks.

  • Scientists are investigating how glutamatergic activity affects behavior in animal models.

Surface Forms

glutamatergic singular
glutamatergics plural

Morphology

glutamatergic = glutamate (opaque) = glutamate + ergic

The word is built from glutamate plus the technical suffix -ergic, but the resulting neuroscience term is not directly inferable for an average learner.

Etymology

Glutamatergic comes from glutamate, a common brain chemical, and the ending -ergic, which means 'using' or 'working with', like in allergic. So a glutamatergic is a nerve cell that 'uses' glutamate to send messages to other cells in the brain.