The Dark Matter of the Human Brain

Mysterious cells in your brain, known as glia, outnumber your neurons 10 to 1, and nobody knows what they do.

By Carl Zimmer
Mar 25, 2019 4:44 PMNov 12, 2019 4:15 AM
glia-cells.jpg
Glia (seen here in red) may process information, much as neurons do. | ArizonaLifeScience via Wikimedia

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Some of the common words we use are frozen mistakes. The term influenza comes from the Italian word meaning “influence”—an allusion to the influence the stars were once believed to have on our health. European explorers searching for an alternate route to India ended up in the New World and uncomprehendingly dubbed its inhabitants Indios, or Indians. Neuroscientists have a frozen mistake of their own, and it is a spectacular blunder. In the mid-1800s researchers discovered cells in the brain that are not like neurons (the presumed active players of the brain) and called them glia, the Greek word for “glue.” Even though the brain contains about a trillion glia — 10 times as many as there are neurons — the assumption was that those cells were nothing more than a support system. Today we know the name could not be more wrong.

Glia, in fact, are busy multitaskers, guiding the brain’s development and sustaining it throughout our lives. Glia also listen carefully to their neighbors, and they speak in a chemical language of their own. Scientists do not yet understand that language, but experiments suggest that it is part of the neurological conversation that takes place as we learn and form new memories.

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