Astrocytes

Astrocytes play diverse roles in central nervous system (CNS) function and dysfunction, and the connections that the astrocyte makes with other cells of the brain are essential for a variety of important neural tasks. Bringing together contributions from international experts at the top of their field, Astrocytes: Wiring the Brain emphasizes cellular connections and surveys the most current findings on astrocyte activity. The first section of the book identifies major astrocyte biomarkers and describes how they define the different connectivity domains. Next, the book examines the role of these connections. It explains how their function can be manipulated under physiological conditions and how dysfunction of the connectivity leads to aberrant brain performance. The final section explores the alterations of glia that have been observed in specific diseases of the brain. These include epilepsy, autoimmune encephalitis, Alzheimer’s disease, autism, and major depression. The book identifies key mechanisms responsible for these alterations. An important and emerging field, astrocytes and their functions are critical to neuroscientists and neurologists, both in academia and in industry, particularly in the search for and development of new drugs to combat a variety of diseases affecting the CNS. As research continues to grow in this area, this volume will spur heightened advances and understanding into the effects of these neural cells on a range of pathologies.

Epilepsy is a devastating group of neurological disorders characterized by periodic and unpredictable seizure activity in the brain. There is a critical need for new drugs and approaches given than at least one-third of all epilepsy patients are not made free of seizures by existing medications and become "medically refractory". Much of epilepsy research has focused on neuronal therapeutic targets, but current antiepileptic drugs often cause severe cognitive, developmental, and behavioral side effects. Recent findings indicate a critical contribution of astrocytes, star-shaped glial cells in the brain, to neuronal and network excitability and seizure activity. Furthermore, many important cellular and molecular changes occur in astrocytes in epileptic tissue in both humans and animal models of epilepsy. The goal of Astrocytes and Epilepsy is to comprehensively review exciting findings linking changes in astrocytes to functional changes responsible for epilepsy for the first time in book format. These insights into astrocyte contribution to seizure susceptibility indicate that astrocytes may represent an important new therapeutic target in the control of epilepsy. Astrocytes and Epilepsy includes background explanatory text on astrocyte morphology and physiology, epilepsy models and syndromes, and evidence from both human tissue studies and animal models linking functional changes in astrocytes to epilepsy. Beautifully labelled diagrams are presented and relevant figures from the literature are reproduced to elucidate key findings and concepts in this rapidly emerging field. Astrocytes and Epilepsy is written for neuroscientists, epilepsy researchers, astrocyte investigators as well as neurologists and other specialists caring for patients with epilepsy. Presents the first comprehensive book to synthesize historical and recent research on astrocytes and epilepsy into one coherent volume Provides a great resource on the field of astrocyte biology and astrocyte-neuron interactions Details potential therapeutic targets, including chapters on gap junctions, water and potassium channels, glutamate and adenosine metabolism, and inflammation

Interest in the functional roles of astrocytes in the nervous system has grown significantly as it is recognized that these cells not only have their own pharmacology but also release neuro- and vaso-active factors. This book relates astrocyte pharmacology to cell function for the first time, making it an attractive text across the neuroscience community.

A team of authors from prestigious academic schools contributed to draw up a project that would give a detailed account of astrocyte's morphology and physiology, examining thoroughly all the astrocyte's types; giving an accurate description of their morphology, location, function in the brain; and illustrating their physiology and pathology in terms of dealing with neurons through "gliotransmitters," ionic channels, and membrane receptors expression. This book gives an overview of the crucial role of astrocytes in the physiology of the CNS and in the pathogenesis of several CNS disorders suggesting that the shift from a neurocentric view to one that incorporates astrocytes in disease models for drug discovery is a critical step in renewing drug development strategies to treat neurodegenerative diseases.

Every year, an estimated 1.7 million Americans sustain brain injury. Long-term disabilities impact nearly half of moderate brain injury survivors and nearly 50,000 of these cases result in death. Brain Neurotrauma: Molecular, Neuropsychological, and Rehabilitation Aspects provides a comprehensive and up-to-date account on the latest developments in the area of neurotrauma, including brain injury pathophysiology, biomarker research, experimental models of CNS injury, diagnostic methods, and neurotherapeutic interventions as well as neurorehabilitation strategies in the field of neurotraum research. The book includes several sections on neurotrauma mechanisms, biomarker discovery, neurocognitive/neurobehavioral deficits, and neurorehabilitation and treatment approaches. It also contains a section devoted to models of mild CNS injury, including blast and sport-related injuries. Over the last decade, the field of neurotrauma has witnessed significant advances, especially at the molecular, cellular, and behavioral levels. This progress is largely due to the introduction of novel techniques, as well as the development of new animal models of central nervous system (CNS) injury. This book, with its diverse coherent content, gives you insight into the diverse and heterogeneous aspects of CNS pathology and/or rehabilitation needs.

Astrocytes were the original neuroglia that Ramón y Cajal visualized in 1913 using a gold sublimate stain. This stain targeted intermediate filaments that we now know consist mainly of glial fibrillary acidic protein, a protein used today as an astrocytic marker. Cajal described the morphological diversity of these cells with some ast- cytes surrounding neurons, while the others are intimately associated with vasculature. We start the book by discussing the heterogeneity of astrocytes using contemporary tools and by calling into question the assumption by classical neuroscience that neurons and glia are derived from distinct pools of progenitor cells. Astrocytes have long been neglected as active participants in intercellular communication and information processing in the central nervous system, in part due to their lack of electrical excitability. The follow up chapters review the “nuts and bolts” of ast- cytic physiology; astrocytes possess a diverse assortment of ion channels, neu- transmitter receptors, and transport mechanisms that enable the astrocytes to respond to many of the same signals that act on neurons. Since astrocytes can detect chemical transmitters that are released from neurons and can release their own extracellular signals there is an increasing awareness that they play physiological roles in regulating neuronal activity and synaptic transmission. In addition to these physiological roles, it is becoming increasingly recognized that astrocytes play critical roles during pathophysiological states of the nervous system; these states include gliomas, Alexander disease, and epilepsy to mention a few.

This Methods in Molecular Biology book is a comprehensive guide to techniques for astrocyte cell culture, and more specialized approaches for studying astrocyte functions, both in vitro and in vivo. Offers step-by-step protocols, troubleshooting tips and more.

Over the last two decades, the recognition that astrocytes - the predominant type of cortical glial cells - could sense neighboring neuronal activity and release neuroactive agents, has been instrumental in the uncovering of many roles that these cells could play in brain processing and the storage of information. These findings initiated a conceptual revolution that leads to rethinking how brain communication works since they imply that information travels and is processed not just in the neuronal circuitry but in an expanded neuron-glial network. On the other hand the physiological need for astrocyte signaling in brain information processing and the modes of action of these cells in computational tasks remain largely undefined. This is due, to a large extent, both to the lack of conclusive experimental evidence, and to a substantial lack of a theoretical framework to address modeling and characterization of the many possible astrocyte functions. This book that we propose aims at filling this gap, providing the first systematic computational approach to the complex, wide subject of neuron-glia interactions. The organization of the book is unique insofar as it considers a selection of “hot topics” in glia research that ideally brings together both the novelty of the recent experimental findings in the field and the modelling challenge that they bear. A chapter written by experimentalists, possibly in collaboration with theoreticians, will introduce each topic. The aim of this chapter, that we foresee less technical in its style than in conventional reviews, will be to provide a review as clear as possible, of what is “established” and what remains speculative (i.e. the open questions). Each topic will then be presented in its possible different aspects, by 2-3 chapters by theoreticians. These chapters will be edited in order to provide a “priming” reference for modeling neuron-glia interactions, suitable both for the graduate student and the professional researcher.