stimulus to further experiment. With only two transmitter chemicals known to exist at the time, the possibility of a neuron releasing more than one transmitter at a single synapse did not enter anybody's mind, and so no care was taken to frame hypotheses in a way that took this possibility into account. The resulting ambiguity in the initial statements led to some confusion in the literature about the precise meaning of the principle. Nicoll and Malenka, for example, understood it to state that a neuron always releases one and only one neurotransmitter at all of its synapses. In this form it is certainly false. Many neurons release more than one neurotransmitter, in what is called "cotransmission". Although there were earlier hints, the first formal proposal of this discovery did not come until 1976. Most neurons release several different chemical messengers. In modern neuroscience, neurons are often classified by their neurotransmitter and most important cotransmitter, for example striatal GABA neurons utilize either opioid peptides or substance P as the primary cotransmitter. In a 1976 publication, however, Eccles interpreted the principle in a subtly different way: "I proposed that Dale’s Principle be defined as stating that at all the axonal branches of a neurone, there was liberation of the same transmitter substance or substances." The addition of "or substances" is critical. With this change, the principle allows for the possibility of neurons releasing more than one transmitter, and only asserts that the same set are released at all synapses. In this form, it continues to be an important rule of thumb, with only a few known exceptions, including David Sulzer and Stephen Rayport's finding that dopamine neurons also release glutamate as a neurotransmitter, but at separate release sites. References Neurochemistry Neurophysiology