The Brain Has a Dizzying Array of Mystery Cells

Scientists have determined that there are 3,300 different kinds of brain cells, only about half of which are neurons, The New York Times reports. The others are much more mysterious.

“Astrocytes, for example, appear to nurture neurons so that they can keep working properly. Microglia serve as immune cells, attacking foreign invaders and pruning some of the branches on neurons to improve their signaling. And the researchers found many new types of these cells as well.”

One thing is clear:

“It’s really the connections — how these cells are talking to each other — that makes us different from the chimpanzees,” said Trygve Bakken, a neuroscientist at the Allen Brain Institute who worked on the primate studies.

Also:

“Understanding how the human brain works is not a matter of simply cataloging each and every part down to its finest details,” says Megan Carey, a neuroscientist at the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Portugal. “Neuroscientists will also have to step back and look at the brain as a self-regulating system.”

The research provided a staggering amount of new data for researchers to use in future brain mapping efforts. We asked ChatGPT to help us imagine the contribution that this finding has made to Sarina Rao’s efforts to deploy thalamitic integration in humans:

“Understanding how cells talk to each other can lead to advancements in replicating or enhancing these communication pathways in thalamitic integration systems, possibly leading to more sophisticated and efficient brain-machine interfaces.”

I’ll buy that…