Electrocytes or electroplaques are cells used by electric eels and other electric fishes for electrogenesis, used to generate an electric shock, but also for electroreception. They are flat disk-like cells that are stacked in a sequence in a manner similar to a battery, and make up the electric organs of the fish. Electric eels have several thousand of these stacked, each producing 0.15V, this becomes a lot when you add them together. Postsynaptically electrocytes work much like muscle cells, and because of its resemblance to nerve-muscle junctions, it's used in research to model important components of this. To discharge the electrocytes at the correct time, the electric eel uses its pacemaker nucleus, a nucleus of pacemaker neurons. When an electric eel spots its pray, the pacemaker neurons fires and acetylcholine is soon released from electromotor neurons to the electrocytes, resulting in an electric organ discharge.
The ingrowing neurites preferentially orient towards the ventral electrocyte surface and course along the basal lamina (the basal lamina of the ventral surface develops prior to the basal lamina of the dorsal surface).
Each electrocyte is ultimately innervated by a number of axons, that continue to grow in size with the overall growth of the animal indicate that synaptogenesis is an ongoing process.
Electrocytes are flattened cells with a smooth, innervated surface on one side and a highly infolded surface on the other side (surface increase).
The electrocytes establish a charge difference across the cell membranes, presumably by active transport of ions.
The discharge is controlled by signals sent through massively hypertrophied motor neurons coordinated by a medullary pacemaker, which cause the gradient to collapse coordinately across the posterior face of each electrocyte, resulting in a net surge of current through the cell column.
It appears to be important that all of the electrocytes fire as simultaneously as possible.
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