How to Use dendritic in a Sentence

dendritic

adjective
  • These dendritic spines look like mushrooms with rounded heads and skinny, tiny necks.
    — David Grossman, Popular Mechanics, 18 Jan. 2019
  • One dendritic tree can handle the work of thousands of simple virtual neurons.
    — Ron Schmelzer, Forbes.com, 29 Aug. 2025
  • The researchers also found that different genes were switched on in fetal dendritic cells than in adult dendritic cells.
    — Gretchen Vogel, Science | AAAS, 14 June 2017
  • These cells, called dendritic cells, are better able to produce an immune response, Griffin said.
    — Jeremy Diamond, CNN, 9 Aug. 2022
  • For instance, coupling the drug with something else that helps those new dendritic spines survive could prolong ketamine’s effects.
    — Lacy Schley, Discover Magazine, 15 Apr. 2019
  • That process begins with dendritic cells, which identify a virus or other pathogen and present examples of it to the rest of the immune system.
    — Roxanne Khamsi, The Atlantic, 24 Sep. 2022
  • Classic six-sided snowflakes, known as dendritic flakes, accumulate best.
    — Stephanie Pappas, Scientific American, 23 Feb. 2026
  • The method — previously used for flu and rabies vaccines — produces an immune response due to dendritic cells which are found in the skin.
    — Jen Juneau, Peoplemag, 11 Aug. 2022
  • Then, in the next neuron, a dendritic plateau potential causes a widespread voltage change that spreads across the entire dendrite.
    — Yasemin Saplakoglu, Quanta Magazine, 24 Apr. 2026
  • Once there, the vaccine components encounter dendritic cells and macrophages—two types of immune cells that can sense when something foreign is sneaking around in the body.
    — Megan Molteni, Wired, 25 Feb. 2021
  • At the bottom of the rock a long, curved black feature traverses the entire lower face with a concentration of dendritic forms in the midpoint.
    — David W. Frayer, Scientific American, 1 Feb. 2022
  • Interestingly, the brain didn’t just restore dendritic spines willy nilly.
    — Lacy Schley, Discover Magazine, 15 Apr. 2019
  • Snow Snow falls when the air temperature is below 32 degrees, all the way from where the snow forms (the dendritic growth zone) to just above the surface.
    — Grant Gilmore, CBS News, 22 Jan. 2026
  • Lymph nodes are loaded with T cells, B cells, dendritic cells, and macrophages — all cells that are involved in identifying and mounting a response to infection.
    — Avery Hurt, Discover Magazine, 2 July 2021
  • In rodent experiments, both molecules promote dendritic growth in the prefrontal cortex.
    — Clayton Dalton, New Yorker, 13 Mar. 2026
  • Yet when the researchers blocked key proteins involved in dendritic growth, the improvements disappeared—a suggestion that the drug’s mental-health effects might depend on the growth.
    — Clayton Dalton, New Yorker, 13 Mar. 2026
  • Dendritic cells usually send out signals that ramp up proliferation of another type of immune cell, T cells, which then attack invaders.
    — Gretchen Vogel, Science | AAAS, 14 June 2017
  • The rock is remarkable for its numerous dendritic structures, which are exposed in cross section and longitudinally.
    — David W. Frayer, Scientific American, 1 Feb. 2022
  • That’s certainly the case for dendritic trees—the branching network of neuron inputs that collect the signals arriving from all incoming connections.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 31 July 2012
  • They have also been shown to increase the density of dendritic spines — small protrusions found on nerve cells — in turn spurring the growth of neuronal connections that can be lost in cases of chronic stress or depression.
    — Steve Volk, Rolling Stone, 22 June 2022
  • In particular, the drugs appeared to fuel the growth of dendritic spines and axons, the appendages that brain cells of all sorts use to reach out in the darkness and create connections, or synapses, with other brain cells.
    — Melissa Healy, latimes.com, 12 June 2018
  • Along with most of the dendritic system of tributaries that drained the Uptown New Orleans watershed, the scenic spot fell victim to three phases of drainage history.
    — Richard Campanella, NOLA.com, 30 Oct. 2020
  • Ampligen appeared to rehabilitate some of her immunological deficiencies by restoring her dendritic and white blood cells to normal functioning.
    — Mike Mariani, The New Yorker, 3 Sep. 2019
  • Apparently the protein acts sluggishly in some bipolar patients, hampering neurons’ ability to form dendritic spines—little bumps that occur on the edges of nerve cells that are necessary for neural communication.
    — Dina Fine Maron, Scientific American, 27 Feb. 2018
  • Apparently, the protein acts sluggishly in some bipolar patients, hampering neurons’ ability to form dendritic spines—little bumps that occur on the edges of nerve cells that are necessary for neural communication.
    — Dina Fine Maron, Scientific American, 27 Feb. 2018
  • Back in 2003, a trio of neuroscientists showed that the dendritic trees of a pyramidal neuron perform complex computations by modeling it as a two-layer artificial neural network.
    — Quanta Magazine, 2 Sep. 2021
  • Laboratory and modeling studies have already shown that tiny compartments in the dendritic arms of cortical neurons can each perform complicated operations in mathematical logic.
    — Quanta Magazine, 14 Jan. 2020
  • In 2024, Jain and his team reported that dendritic plateaus might cause a cascade of biochemical signals to build up over several seconds and then activate one of the most important proteins for learning, known as CaMKII.
    — Yasemin Saplakoglu, Quanta Magazine, 24 Apr. 2026
  • The questions covered a wide swath of material, from the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution (physics), supercritical water (chemistry), dendritic drainage patterns (geomorphology) to prime factors (mathematics).
    — Silvia Foster-Frau, San Antonio Express-News, 10 Feb. 2018
  • Accelerating the commercialization of next-gen batteries In traditional batteries, electrolyte solvents break down to produce soft, fragile organic SEI layers, leading to uneven lithium plating and the formation of sharp, dendritic structures that resemble needles.
    — Chris Young, Interesting Engineering, 6 Jan. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'dendritic.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: