{"id":230252,"date":"2026-01-31T13:10:29","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T19:10:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/once-thought-to-support-neurons-astrocytes-turn-out-to-be-in-charge"},"modified":"2026-01-31T13:10:29","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T19:10:29","slug":"once-thought-to-support-neurons-astrocytes-turn-out-to-be-in-charge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/once-thought-to-support-neurons-astrocytes-turn-out-to-be-in-charge","title":{"rendered":"Once Thought To Support Neurons, Astrocytes Turn Out To Be in Charge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/once-thought-to-support-neurons-astrocytes-turn-out-to-be-in-charge.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Misha Ahrens\u2019 team at Janelia Research Campus placed zebra fish in virtual reality where swimming produced no progress. Normally, fish give up after ~20 seconds. The researchers found astrocytes were \u201ccounting\u201d swim attempts via accumulating calcium. When calcium reached a threshold, astrocytes released adenosine to suppress swimming circuits. When researchers disabled astrocytes with a laser, the fish never stopped swimming; when they artificially activated astrocytes, the fish stopped immediately. This showed astrocytes actively mediate the transition from hope to hopelessness.<\/p>\n<p>Marc Freeman\u2019s lab showed norepinephrine doesn\u2019t just activate astrocytes\u2014it changes their \u201chearing.\u201d At low norepinephrine (low arousal), astrocytes ignore synaptic activity. At high norepinephrine (high arousal), astrocytes suddenly \u201clisten\u201d to every synapse and modulate neuronal response accordingly. This creates a dynamic gain control system layered atop neuronal networks.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>\u201cWe did expect that, in large part, the effect of norepinephrine on synapses would be mediated by astrocytes,\u201d Papouin said. \u201cBut we did not expect all of it to be!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The finding of parallel molecular pathways in such distinct species as fruit flies, zebra fish, and mice points to \u201can evolutionarily conserved way in which astrocytes can profoundly affect neural circuits,\u201d Freeman said.<\/p>\n<p>The results suggest a gaping hole in previous theories of neuromodulation. \u201cIn the past, neuroscientists studied neuromodulators and knew they were important in regulating neural circuit function, but none of their thinking, none of their diagrams, none of their models had anything in them other than neurons,\u201d Fields said. \u201cNow we see that they missed a big part of the story.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Misha Ahrens\u2019 team at Janelia Research Campus placed zebra fish in virtual reality where swimming produced no progress. Normally, fish give up after ~20 seconds. The researchers found astrocytes were \u201ccounting\u201d swim attempts via accumulating calcium. When calcium reached a threshold, astrocytes released adenosine to suppress swimming circuits. When researchers disabled astrocytes with a laser, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1879],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-virtual-reality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230252","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\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}