Ken McCarthy, a geneticist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill, is about to fan the flames of a debate about whether glia, the largest contingent of non-neuronal cells in the brain, are important in transmitting electrical messages. For many years, neurons were thought to be alone in executing this task, and glia were consigned to a supporting role regulating a neuron's environment, helping it to grow, and even providing physical scaffolding (glia is Greek for 'glue'). In the past couple of decades, however, this picture has been changing.

Read it at Nature News

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