Scope: Culturing technique captures hard-to-study, critically important brain cell — the oligodendrocyte — in action

Picture an extra-lengthy, extra-thin, extra-flexible slab of greasy cheese coiling itself in multiple layers around a foot-long hot dog. Not quite the picture one usually has in mind when thinking about how our brains work, is it? But a set of fat-filled brain cells called oligodendrocytes are critical to pretty much everything the brain does — as much so, really, as the nerve cells or neurons (the hot dogs in my metaphor), that oligodendrocytes wrap their flabby protrusions around. (January 29, 2019)

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from Brain Health Daily http://bit.ly/2Tp7q0g