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Takahiro TANAKA1, 2)2)Research Institute for Diseases of Old Age, Juntendo University Graduate School of Medicine, Tokyo, JapanCorresponding author: Takahiro TanakaFaculty of Medicine, Juntendo University2-1-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8421, JapanTEL: +81-3-3813-3111　E-mail: med2116072@stud.juntendo.ac.jp〔Received　Feb. 2, 2021〕〔Accepted　Apr. 20, 2021〕J-STAGE Advance published date: Jun. 7, 2021Copyright © 2021 The Juntendo Medical Society. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original source is properly credited. doi: 10.14789/jmj.JMJ21-R02Juntendo Medical Journal2021. 67(4), 329-332Key words: dendrite, dendritic spine, confocal microscopeReviewDevelopment of an Efficient Method for Classifying Large Numbers of Spines are protrusions from the dendrites of a neuron and receive synaptic inputs from other neurons. They are classified by their length, head diameter, and neck diameter into four types as seen in figure 1: Filopodium, thin, stubby, and mushroom spines1). Mushroom and stubby spines Dendritic spines are classified according to its spine length, head diameter, and neck diameter1). Filopodium are spines that are over 3 µm in length without a wide head. Thin are spines that are not long as the filopodium cutoff length but have a larger spine length than its diameter. Stubby spines have a longer diameter than its spine length. Mushroom spines have a bigger head diameter than its neck diameter.1)Faculty of Medicine, Juntendo University, Tokyo, JapanFigure 1　The Classification of Dendritic Spinesare considered to have stronger inputs whereas thin spines and filopodia are assumed to have weak inputs or be in the process of synapse formation2). Recent findings in neuroscience have pointed to the importance of spines on the overall behavior of the human brain3). Certain developmental disor-329Dendritic Spines Using Confocal Microscopy