Description:
Discover the other 90% of your brain and how it may hold the key to everything from intelligence to curing Alzheimer's!
- From fruit flies to Einstein: the amazing role of glial cells in thinking, dreaming, and the health
of your brain.
- Glial cells as "adult stem cells": how they keep your brain growing and adapting throughout your life.
- Breakthrough ideas that may lead to treatments for brain cancer, traumatic brain injuries, Parkinson's, Lou Gehrig's disease, and more.
If you know anything about human brains, you know about neurons—the cells that have long been seen as central to virtually everything your brain thinks, feels, and does. But neurons represent only 10% of your brain cells: The other 90% are glial cells. Until recently, neuroscientists thought glial cells did little more than hold your brain together. But in the past few years, they’ve discovered that glial cells are extraordinarily important. In fact, they may hold the key to understanding intelligence, treating psychiatric disorders and brain injuries—and perhaps even curing fatal conditions like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
In The Root of Thought, leading neuroscientist Andrew Koob reveals what we’ve learned about these remarkable cells—from their unexpected role in information storage to their function as “adult stem cells” that can keep your brain growing and adapting far longer than scientists ever imagined possible. Ranging from fruit flies to Einstein, Koob reveals the surprising correlation between intelligence and the brain’s percentage of glia cells—and why these cells’ unique wavelike communications may be especially conducive to the fluid information processing human beings depend upon. You’ll learn how crucial glia cells grow and develop, why almost all brain tumors are comprised of glia cells, the potential implications for treatment, and even the apparent role of glia cells in your every thought and dream!