Scientists have engineered a nanowire platform that mimics brain tissue to study astrocytes, the star-shaped cells critical for brain health, for the first time in their natural state. Astrocytes are ...

Resting brain stem cells hardly differ from normal astrocytes, which support the nerve cells in the brain. How can almost identical cells perform such different functions? The key lies in the ...

Astrocytes are star shaped cells that make up around 35% of human brain cells. They were once thought of as cells that simply supported neurons in the central nervous system (CNS). But in recent years ...

Cedars-Sinai investigators have discovered a healing mechanism that could one day be harnessed to help treat patients with ...

As a neuromodulator, norepinephrine is a powerful force in the brain. We all know it orchestrates rapid changes in behavior such as the fight-or-flight response. Fewer people know that astrocytes ...

“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 ...

When it comes to brain function, neurons get a lot of the glory. But healthy brains depend on the cooperation of many kinds of cells. The most abundant of the brain's non-neuronal cells are astrocytes ...

Astrocytes are found throughout the brain. Each astrocyte is in contact with several neurons and more than 100'000 synapses. A new study shows that, at the microscopic level, dozens of synapses from ...