Scientists have identified a new hybrid brain cell, sharing attributes of neurons and astrocytes. These cells can release neurotransmitters and may influence conditions like epilepsy and memory consolidation.
Original article:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06502-wThe Real MVP! Thank You!
Its astounding how little we still understand about the brain in 2024.
To me, it’s more surprising that we actually know quite a lot about the brain - and yet we still manage to discover new things about it, even fundamentally new like new cell types. Wow.
The more you learn about medical science, the more you realize how very little we know/understand.
It makes me feel better about the current state of medical practice. I’ve often felt disappointed with the options doctors have for me, or by their inability to diagnose a problem.
But the realization that they don’t have a user manual, or a schematic, and the scientific community only has a limited understanding of how this all works, really does make it easier to understand. Doctors aren’t akin to engineers, they aren’t given enough info to be engineers, they’re hackers. Doctors need to reverse engineer systems that are way over their heads, and tease them into doing something else. They need to find those undocumented instructions and then, indirectly, use chemistry to implement them into the body.
I hope their next discovery isn’t that it was just microplastics floating around in there.
