Neuroscience doctoral student receives NIH award to study the little-known astrocyte
Behind our thoughts, our behaviors, and our movements are firing neurons. These foundational brain cells communicate with one another to mediate the many things our brains do via contact points known as synapses. But behind that activity is a brain cell that’s received far less study throughout the history of neuroscience: the astrocyte.
Beatriz T. Ceja Pinkston, a Ph.D. student in the Olsen Lab at Virginia Tech, part of the School of Neuroscience, calls astrocytes the “multitasking workhorse of the brain.”