New experiments reveal how astrocytes tune neuronal activity to modulate our mental and emotional states. The results suggest that neuron-only brain models, such as connectomes, leave out a crucial ...

Astrocytes are highly heterogeneous neuroglial cells with distinct functional and morphological characteristics in different parts of the brain. They are responsible for maintaining a number of ...

Picture a star-shaped cell in the brain, stretching its spindly arms out to cradle the neurons around it. That's an astrocyte, and for a long time, scientists thought its job was caretaking the brain, ...

“If we go back to the early 1900s, this is when the idea was first proposed that memories are physically stored in some location within the brain,” says Michael R. Williamson, a researcher at the ...

Astrocytes — named for their star-like shape — are a type of brain cell as abundant as neurons in the central nervous system, but little is known about their role in brain health and disease. Many ...