Tag Archives: synapses

Glia brain cells: Not just infrastructure

Impact: Neuroscience    March 8, 2013
So many stories about this recent neuroscience research begin with – “human brain cells make mice smarter” – and miss the point of the research almost entirely. It’s not about mice. It’s about a type of human brain cells, glia, which are just now coming into focus for neuroscience. For those that understand the prolog, [...]
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Rethink the brain: More evidence for the tripartite synapse

Impact: Neuroscience    April 3, 2012
The star (fish) shaped astrocyte cell….Credit: Neurorocker If you’ve had any exposure to how the brain and nervous system works, you probably know about synapses – the juncture where the end of one neuron almost meets the beginning of another neuron. The synapse is two neurons and the gap between them, the point where either [...]
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Memristors go into production

Impact: Computer Power    April 9, 2010
It’s difficult to evaluate what may be a fundamental advance in technology that happens to be mostly the product of a single company. The enthusiasm of one company doesn’t mean that the new technology – in this case the memristor (memory resistor) – will be accepted as fundamental to new products from other companies, in [...]
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Cracking the neural code: Not yet, but models help

News: Neuroscience    April 5, 2010
What neuroscience researchers really, really want is to figure out the neural (brain) code. What are all those neurons saying to each other? That’s an analogy, of course. There are many analogies that can be used to describe the brain. For the moment, let’s use a big tangled ball of thread. The neurons, brain cells, [...]
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