{"id":206519,"date":"2025-02-15T06:11:55","date_gmt":"2025-02-15T12:11:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/the-overlooked-astrocyte-star-shaped-brain-cells-may-form-specialized-networks-for-reward-learning"},"modified":"2025-02-15T06:11:55","modified_gmt":"2025-02-15T12:11:55","slug":"the-overlooked-astrocyte-star-shaped-brain-cells-may-form-specialized-networks-for-reward-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/the-overlooked-astrocyte-star-shaped-brain-cells-may-form-specialized-networks-for-reward-learning","title":{"rendered":"The overlooked astrocyte: Star-shaped brain cells may form specialized networks for reward learning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-overlooked-astrocyte-star-shaped-brain-cells-may-form-specialized-networks-for-reward-learning2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Most neuroscience research carried out up to date has primarily focused on neurons, the most renowned type of cell in the human brain. As a result, the unique functions of other brain cell types are less understood and have often been entirely overlooked.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers at Instituto Cajal (CSIC), the Autonomous University of Madrid and Institute de Salud Carlos III recently carried out a study aimed at better understanding the contributions of astrocytes, a class of star-shaped glial cells found in the brain and spinal cord, to key mental functions. Their findings, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41593-025-01870-0\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Nature Neuroscience<\/i>, unveiled the existence of astrocytic ensembles, specialized <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/astrocyte\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">astrocyte<\/a> subsets that appear to be active during reward-driven behaviors.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is known that astrocytes are a heterogeneous cell type in their molecular and gene expression signatures, morphology and origin,\u201d Marta Navarrete, senior author of the paper, told Medical Xpress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most neuroscience research carried out up to date has primarily focused on neurons, the most renowned type of cell in the human brain. As a result, the unique functions of other brain cell types are less understood and have often been entirely overlooked. Researchers at Instituto Cajal (CSIC), the Autonomous University of Madrid and Institute [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206519\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}