A microscopic parasite quietly infects the brains of millions worldwide. Known scientifically as Toxoplasma gondii, this tiny ...

Glutamate is the primary neurotransmitter that nerve cells in the brain use to communicate with one another. Past ...

Hippocampal astrocyte expressing GFP Credit: ... "Astrocytes contain a vesicular compartment that is competent for regulated exocytosis of glutamate," Nat Neurosci, 7:613-20, 2004. (Cited in 86 papers ...

Potential Astrocyte Dysfunction in Neurodegenerative Diseases. (1)Impairment of glutamate transporters, through reduced expression, aberrant RNA synthesis or altered function, results in increased ...

The astrocytes' response to neuronal signals can also change; they can modulate how they respond to neurotransmitters such as dopamine and glutamate. “Astrocytes are really big, and a single cell can ...

Glutamate release responses always took place at specific hotspots of an astrocyte, providing direct functional evidence for the existence of a specialized population of glutamatergic astrocytes ...

When astrocytes release glutamate quickly at hyperlocalized sites, they can influence how neurons communicate, change their connections, and even cause some neuropsychiatric conditions.

When astrocyte function is disrupted, ... The first one (a knockdown of the glutamate transporter GLT1) didn't affect whether the mice pushed the lever or how quickly they did so.

In some mice, they disrupted the astrocytes' ability to soak up the neurotransmitter glutamate, a chemical that excites neural activity when it is received at connections called synapses.

One of the causes seems to be a protein secreted by the astrocytes. “The results are very clear, you know, very convincing,” says Yongjie Yang, professor of neuroscience at Tufts School of Medicine in ...

Glutamate is one of the most important excitatory neurotransmitters in the central nervous system and is vital for signal transmission between nerve cells. The strength of signal transmission is ...

We will begin by highlighting a subset of the many cellular functions of astrocytes, focusing specifically on those functions that have the most relevance to neurodegeneration (Figure 1). Other ...