Glial cells chemical structure

Category of glial cells in the vertebrate central nervous system with long radial processes. Astrocytes provide structural support to neive cells and help to control their chemical and ionic extracellular environment. 

As in previous chapters, to appreciate the use of chemical elements in a new structure, here the brain, the nature of its compartments must be described. The evolution of the brain from the nematode can be traced all the way up to man in its quickly changing construction. No doubt there are lots of possible different arrangements of the zones of the brain but even so a line of ascending organisation can be drawn over a few hundred million years (Fig. 9.4 and Table 9.3). Particular features not stressed so far are the mutual development of the brain nerve and glial cells in zones, the possible functions of the zones (Table 9.4), the position... 

The chemical structure of MPTP suggests that the compound should be relatively inert chemically, given that no reactive functional group is present, and that MPTP might undergo metabolic activation to a more reactive derivative. Researchers discovered that brain MAOB (mainly in glial cells) catalyzes a two-... 

In addition to neuronal loss, more subtle alterations in neuronal and synaptic function are observed after TBI. Because these changes do not involve stark cell loss, they are potentially reversible. Before discussing alterations, it is perhaps important to give an overview of synaptic structure and function. Synapses can be either electrical or chemical. We focus on chemical synapses (called synapses for the rest of the chapter) because they are, by far, the most common type of synapse. Synapses are incredibly small structures, with a diameter of 300 150 nm and a gap of only 20 2.8nm (Ribrault et al., 2011). By and large, synapses comprise three parts a presynaptic site, a postsynaptic site, and a glial element (Figure 47.4). 

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