A systematic review and multilevel meta-analysis of the prenatal and early life stress effects on rodent microglia, astrocyte, and oligodendrocyte density and morphology – I absolutely loathe work like this even if it produces interesting results. It’s frustrating that we are still at the point where it’s either intentional torture or unintentional/lower intensity torture (control group) for so much work.
That sin swallowed, this is really fascinating as it implies that adverse events during development likely have no effect on the ability to create behavioral/stimuli responses, but does modify the ability to retain or prune them. It brings up a couple of questions, the first being the effect of this homeostatic imbalance. It feels like we should be able to see the difference energetically, oligos and microglia both modify metabolism in very specific ways, so is there a pattern in existing data that can be plumbed?
Human stem cell-derived astrocytes exhibit region-specific heterogeneity in their secretory profiles – Astrocytes are like little brains aren’t they?
Assessment of Neuroanatomical Endophenotypes of Autism Spectrum Disorder and Association With Characteristics of Individuals With Schizophrenia and the General Population – Genetic studies like this are always awful, however pointing out “autism” genes exist across the general population is a pretty big point. The “three phenotypes” thing is a a red herring (and probably inaccurately labeled), it’s bayesian 0-1 mechanics which exist in any population.
Circadian clock protein BMAL1 broadly influences autophagy and endolysosomal function in astrocytes – Why lack of consistent periodic sleep might be bad.
Reactive astrogliosis in the era of single-cell transcriptomics – Slowly working toward better biomarkers.
Opioids induce bidirectional synaptic plasticity in a brainstem pain centre in the rat – Is it the opioids or the persistence of stimuli? No control?
Using stable isotope tracing to unravel the metabolic components of neurodegeneration: Focus on neuron-glia metabolic interactions – Wow, this is really really cool!
Human and mouse cortical astrocytes: a comparative view from development to morphological and functional characterization – Why do mouse/rat models fail to translate to humans so often?
Astrocyte activity linked to synaptic plasticity – Going out on a limb here…
Chronic intermittent ethanol exposure disrupts stress-related tripartite communication to impact affect-related behavioral selection in male rats – Lets give Smashley some prazosin to cure her alcoholism. Or MAAYYYBEEEE… Alcohol Use Disorder is bullshit and people are just coping with persistent anxiety.
Methods to study primary cilia and autophagy in the brain – What a cool review! For reference, PCs serve roughly the same function neurons do intra-cellularly.
Optogenetic Targeting of Astrocytes Restores Slow Brain Rhythm Function and Slows Alzheimer’s Disease Pathology – I would feel a LOT better about this without the amyloid link, which is almost certainly bullshit or incidental. It’s also a little sus because they didn’t see any increased fast rhythm/short range/local activity (seems like they didn’t really look for it). All of the findings however are pretty consistent with what the model expects, including the improved binding of “memory” proteins like amyloids. Slow rhythm is long range/brainstem-> signalling, and the evidence pretty strongly supports the brainstem as the initiation point of sleep organization. Everything about this work is keiku, so maybe I’m just trying to invent reasons to be skeptical of it. Skeptical of my skepticism, the machine is weird.
In lonely mice, astrocytes turn inhibitory – Sort of. Astrocytes don’t “turn inhibitory” based on “loneliness”, they suppress processing for regions related to social activity when not exposed to adequate stimuli as a matter of metabolic homeostasis. Having “social processing” pipes continuously blasting “warning” signals is metabolically expensive and degrades the overall processing cascade. We really have to get our heads around the concept that these “qualia” based descriptions mean fuck all to the nervous system, no matter how much we want them to. There’s no “happy circuit”. There’s no “neuroticism pathway”. Behavior is ENTIRELY comprised of stimuli responses.
Differential ripple propagation along the hippocampal longitudinal axis – The hippocampus is a stream processor (integrator/deconstructor).
Euglenozoan kleptoplasty illuminates the early evolution of photoendosymbiosis – It’s like comic book stuff. And humans already do stuff like this sort of, just look at our guts!