An interesting insight into the word neuron: coined in 1891 by Heinrich Wilhelm Gottfried von Waldeyer-Hartz to describe basic structural unit of the nervous system. Neuron comes from the Greek meaning string or sinew. František Baluška (Institute of Cellular and Molecular Botany, University of Bonn) says the word comes from the Greek meaning vegetal fiber.
Plant neurobiology is described as a discipline with a new view of plants enmeshing the fields of plant physiology, ecology and molecular biology. Tantalizing comparisons between plant and animals, suggests that they may share neurological-like qualities.
Plants use electrical signalling (action potentials for cell-to-cell communications) as well as signalling molecules and processes similar to those in nervous systems. Electrical signalling in plants dates back to 1873 with the publication Electrical Phenomena in Venus Fly Traps by J. Burdon Sanderson and in 1896 Charles Darwin experiment Transmission of Motor Impulse in the same plant species. More recently in 1973, Barbara Pickard wrote in an academic review - Action potentials in higher plants - that the The emerging notion that all higher plants might utilize electrical signals in coordinating a variety of daily function seems ripe for closer examination. A devastating impact to the field - Peter Thomkins and Christopher Bird’s The Secret Life of Plants - concluded that electrical activity in plants points to hidden emotional lives of photoshynthesizers. Thirty (one) years later this field is renamed, expanded and repackaged.
Though the observation of plant electrical signalling is more that a hundred years old, the question today: what is electricity doing to plants? How do plants process information from the environment?
There are two types of electrical signalling in plants: action potentials and variation potentials. It is known that plants contain neurotransmitter machinery similar to animals - glutamate receptor-like genes (GluRs). In animals its the major excitatory neurotransmitter in their central nervous systems whilst in plants little is known about the function of GluRs in Arabidopsis, where they were originally identified, but external application of glutamate can depolarize roots and cause ionic influxes, analogous to neurons.