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  • TECHNOLOGY FEATURE

Tapping into the brain’s star power

No longer just ‘brain glue’, astrocytes are coming to the fore as a broadening toolset reveals the cells’ complexity and diversity.
  1. Esther Landhuis

    1. Esther Landhuis is a freelance science journalist based in the San Francisco Bay area, California.

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In the mid-1850s, German anatomist Rudolf Virchow and others examining brains under the microscope noticed mysterious structures filling the space around and between the neurons that held their interest. Virchow dubbed these structures nervenkitt, literally ‘nerve-glue’, and translated as ‘neuroglia’.

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Nature 563, 141-143 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-07197-0

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