There’s a neat paper in Nature today suggesting that astrocytes, part of the brain’s hidden majority, plays a big role in the formation of memories. The Scientist has details. For background, check out my September Discover column.
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Carl Zimmer writes about science regularly for the New York Times and magazines such as Discover, where he is a contributing editor and columnist.
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January 14th, 2010 at 2:30 pm
Carl,
Slightly unrelated, but in the September Discover column, you say: “Even though the brain contains about a trillion glia—10 times as many as there are neurons”.
In the spirit of fact-checking, what do you think of this article, questioning the veracity of that figure? http://www.springerlink.com/content/w10q224721mmw8u6/fulltext.html; see also this blog post,
I’ve been mean to dig into this in my oh-so-abundant free time but perhaps you have done so already.
January 14th, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Whoops, sorry for the un-proofread comment, above. I would edit it if I could. (The omitted link was to a blog post of little value.)
January 16th, 2010 at 10:10 am
Don’t you mean ‘gray matter’?