Neuroscience. Synapses shout to overcome distance

How do you make yourself heard if you are standing far from the fray? If you are a synapse, like a human, you shout. So says new research published in the September issue of Nature Neuroscience, answering a question that has perplexed neuroscientists for decades: namely, how a message delivered at a synapse far from the cell body--which must fade as it travels through the cell--can make itself heard above the din of messages picked up by close-in synapses.