A brimming inbox on Monday morning sets your head spinning. You take a moment to breathe, and your mind clears enough to survey the emails one by one.
That calming effect occurs thanks to a newly discovered brain circuit involving a lesser-known type of brain cell, the astrocyte. According to U.S. National Science Foundation-supported research from University of California San Francisco, astrocytes tune into and moderate the chatter between overactive neurons.
This new brain circuit, described in Nature Neuroscience, plays a role in modulating attention and perception, and may hold a key in treating attention disorders, such as ADHD, that are neither well understood nor well treated despite an abundance of research on the role of neurons.
Scientists found that noradrenaline, a neurotransmitter that can be thought of as adrenaline for the brain, sends one chemical message to neurons to be more alert, while sending another to astrocytes to quiet down the overactive neurons.
