An interesting new book from R. Douglas Fields: The Other Brain.
"Glia" is a catch-all term for every cell in the nervous system that's not a neuron. We have lots and lots of them: on some estimates, 85% of the cells in the brain are glia. But to most neuroscientists at the moment, they're about as interesting as dirt is to archaeologists. They're the boring stuff that gets in the way. The name is Greek for "glue", which says a lot.
It's telling that most neuroscientists (myself included I confess) use the term "brain cells" to mean neurons, even though they're a minority. Hence the book's title:Douglas Fields argues that glia constitute a whole world, another brain - although of course, it's not seperate from the neuronal brain, and neuron-glia interactions are the really interesting thing and the central theme of the book.
Glia have historically been regarded as mere ...
