Researchers have come up with a strange new type of brain cell that sends signals passing through the cell body altogether. The basic blueprint contains a cell body that has neurons which comes in various shapes and sizes. The Neuron cell body consists of some extended cell part that protrudes out called as dendrites and axons.

Dendrites are structures that have got branchlike forms that receives signals from nerve cells and deliver them to cell body. There is a long projection called the axon that helps in processing the signal and passes information to the neighboring cell.

Dendrites are branchlike structures that receive signals from other nerve cells and deliver them to the cell body. The neuron then processes the signals and zaps along information to the next cell via a long projection called the axon.

The newly discovered cells, however, have a different, and until now, unknown process. In these cells, the signals skip the cell body altogether, instead travelling along an axon that projects directly from one of the dendrites.

"We found that in more than half of the cells, the axon does not emerge from the cell body, but arises from a lower dendrite," said study researcher Christian Thome, a neuroscientist at Heidelberg University and the Bernstein Center Heidelberg-Mannheim.