Neurotransmitter Question, please help

[PrePharmStu2009]

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Hope someone in pharmacy school or anyone can help me.
When talking about neurotransmitters and post synaptic cell. The book said post synaptic can receive signals from millions of pre synaptic neurons. I am confused on the excitatory potential and inhibitory potential. Does the synapse occur from pre synaptics with thousands of post synaptic neurons or just one neurons\? For example, the GABA receptor, where would its post synaptic receptor be and DOES THE EXCITATORY EFECT OCCUR ON THAT ONE NEURON OR IS IT A COLLECTION OF MANY POST SYNAPTIC NERUONS?

And WOULD THERE BE MULTIPLE RECEPTORS OF SAME KING ON THAT ONE NEURON? For example, the beta 1 are there multiple copies of that receptor on that one neuron or just one copy?

 

[PharmDstudent]

Does this help? It's from wiki.

As far as I understand it, the synapse is a single entity.

 

[BadgerPharm]

It's going to depend on whether the neural circuits are divergent (i.e. one neuron synapsing on many post-synaptic cells) or convergent (i.e. many neurons synapsing on one post-synaptic cell). And I could be wrong here, but I also believe that there is only one synapse whether it is a divergent of convergent circuit. EDIT: What I meant was that the pre-synaptic cell individually forms a synapse with the post-synaptic cell, but collectively every individual synapse makes one complete synapse (if a convergent circuit, vice versa if divergent). One portion of the post-synaptic cell is not reserved especially for the signal from one pre-synaptic cell.

When it comes to GABA receptors, the stimulation and opening of these channels allows a flux of chloride ions into the cell, further polarizing the cell thus reducing the excitability of the post-synaptic cell.

 

[PharmEcon]

Hope someone in pharmacy school or anyone can help me.
When talking about neurotransmitters and post synaptic cell. The book said post synaptic can receive signals from millions of pre synaptic neurons. I am confused on the excitatory potential and inhibitory potential. Does the synapse occur from pre synaptics with thousands of post synaptic neurons or just one neurons\? For example, the GABA receptor, where would its post synaptic receptor be and DOES THE EXCITATORY EFECT OCCUR ON THAT ONE NEURON OR IS IT A COLLECTION OF MANY POST SYNAPTIC NERUONS?

And WOULD THERE BE MULTIPLE RECEPTORS OF SAME KING ON THAT ONE NEURON? For example, the beta 1 are there multiple copies of that receptor on that one neuron or just one copy?

A single neuron can have many neurons synapse onto it. Some signals might be inhibitory, others might be excitatory- all of the different signals will "add" to produce a net result (for more on that look up temporal and spatial summation).

Post synaptic neuron simply refers to a neuron in that context that is being synapsed onto by 1 or more presynaptic neurons.

And yes, there are usually multiple receptors of the same kind on the neuron. The number of receptors can actually change over time and is one of the ways signals can get stronger or weaker over time- this is a major component in forming memories.