关键词:
Science
Humanities and Social Sciences
multidisciplinary
摘要:
THE neurones in our brains are required, as we all know, for the complex information-processing tasks of everyday life. Roughly an equal amount of space in the brain, however, is devoted to glial cells, chiefly astrocytes and oligodendrocytes, whose functions are diverse and poorly understood. Glial cells offer many challenges in understanding the overall function of nervous tissue, just one of which is their intriguing electrophysiological behaviour. Several recent papers1"5, including one on page 229 of this issue by Bevan and Raff1, show that glial cells in culture sometimes have hitherto unsuspected membrane characteristics, including high permeability to potassium, higher membrane conductance than resting neurones, direct electrical connections with one another, and the ability to respond metabolically to depolarization induced by local neuronal activity, all of which add to their fascination. How far these properties are characteristic of glial cells in situ is still a matter for *** electrophysiological study of glial cells in tissue culture began in 1958 with work of Hild, Ching and Taskai6 who showed that morphologically identified glial cells do not display the action potentials that are characteristic of most neurones, yet have resting potentials that are sensitive to potassium. Over the years, with contributions from many people working on both isolated cells and intact tissues, a picture has emerged in which some glial cells have very remarkable properties7·10, including probably the most extreme selectivity of membrane permeability for potassium over sodium of all known biological *** aspect that is beginning to be well characterized is the role of glial cells in stabilizing extracellular potassium levels in the nervous system11'15. Many questions remain, even in this highly specific area. For example, the relative importance of potassium dispersal through glia and of net uptake into glial cells remains controversial. The principal mec