Synapses are small gaps between neurons through which signals are transmitted. This transmission of signals is what allows ...

New research highlights how astrocytes, long considered mere support cells, actively shape brain network dynamics.

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have unraveled the processes that give astrocytes, the most abundant glial cell in the brain, their special bushy shape, which is fundamental for brain ...

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have unraveled the processes that give astrocytes, the most abundant glial cell in the brain, their special bushy shape, which is fundamental for brain ...

For years neuroscientists have focused on the brain’s neurons as its principal creators of memory and thought. But what if the reason for our cognitive abilities isn’t in the electrical activity of ...

Smith and co-authors point to evidence that astrocytes may play a key role in this process. Previous research has shown astrocytes sense the moment neurons send a message and can simultaneously ...

Astrocytes also send out many thin tentacles, known as processes, which can each wrap around a single synapse—the junctions where two neurons interact with each other—to create a tripartite ...

“Astrocytes are really bushy,” Williamson says. They have a complex morphology with lots and lots of micro or nanoscale processes that infiltrate the area surrounding them.

“When you’re startled or overwhelmed, there’s so much activity going on in your brain that you can’t take in any more information,” said Kira Poskanzer, PhD, an associate professor of biochemistry and ...

Scientists at the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in South Korea have discovered a new enzyme, called SIRT2, that may play ...