Image of the Month: Astrocytes, neurons and memory
The lab of Dr. Benjamin Deneen has a long history of studying astrocytes and their interactions with neurons. He and his colleagues have found that astrocytes and neurons interact closely with each other, both physically and functionally, and that this is essential for proper brain function.
The Image of the Month reveals such interactions in the context of memory.
A study published in Nature by Deneen and his colleagues at Baylor College of Medicine changes the way we understand memory. Until now, memories have been explained by the activity of neurons, brain cells that respond to learning events and control memory recall. The Baylor team expanded this theory by showing that non-neuronal cell types in the brain called astrocytes – star-shaped cells – also store memories and work in concert with groups of neurons called engrams to regulate storage and retrieval of memories.
Read the study published in Nature, here, and an interview with the authors, here.
Dr. Benjamin Deneen, is professor and Dr. Russell J. and Marian K. Blattner Chair in the Department of Neurosurgery, director of the Center for Cancer Neuroscience, a member of the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center at Baylor and a principal investigator at the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s Hospital.
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