What Are Glial Cells?

The latest research by Shanghai scientists found that astrocytes in the brain have two new important effects on neuron activity: on the one hand, it can keep highly excited neurons properly "calm" from the disease; another On the one hand, it can make neurons produce enhanced responses for a long time, making people learn and remember well. This week's latest issue of the internationally renowned magazine "Neuron" and "American Academy of Sciences" published these two research papers.

Glial cells

The two research results are Duan Shumin, a researcher of the Institute of Neurology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his students.

Duan Shumin and his students found in mouse brain studies that when excitatory neurons increase in activity, glutamate released at the synaptic site can stimulate adjacent astrocytes to release adenosine triphosphate (ATP), ATP Not only has a moderate inhibitory effect on excited neurons, but also inhibits the activities of surrounding neurons, thereby preventing excessive excitability of neurons. Excessive neuron excitement can cause many diseases, such as epilepsy and stroke. In addition, glial cells also play an integral role in neural circuits in performing complex calculations and other activities. This finding is of great significance to the understanding of synaptic modulation and neural networks. "Neurons" published a review at the same time as the paper, and highly evaluated the research results.

Duan Shumin and his students also discovered another function of astrocytes, that is, neurons can't produce a long-term enhanced response without the help of astrocytes. Neuronal long-term enhancement responses are considered to be the basis of brain learning and memory. Astrocytes can help neurons produce enhanced responses ranging from several hours to several days by releasing D-serine. This finding suggests that astrocytes may play an important role in advanced functional activities of the brain.