We Just Discovered 6 New Kinds of Brain Cells

[gwillybj]

We Just Discovered 6 New Kinds of Brain Cells
The map of the human brain gets a little more complete.
Popular Mechanics
By William Herkewitz
Nov 26, 2015 @ 3:19 PM


Daniel Berger, Xiaolong Jiang, Fabian Sinz, Xaq Pitkow, Andreas Tolias

Thanks to a handful of newly discovered neurons, the brain just became a little bit less mysterious.

Today a team of neuroscientists led by Xiaolong Jiang and Andreas Tolias at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston announced six altogether new types of brain cells. The neuroscientists came across these new neurons while conducting a census of brain cells in adult mice in a part of the brain called the the primary visual cortex, an area chiefly concerned with  sight. The researchers credit their new insight to a recently developed method of slicing razor-thin slices of mature brain. The discovery is reported today in the journal Science.

"Just asking 'what types of cells make up the brain' is such a basic question... that establishing a complete census of all neuron cell types is of great importance in moving the field of neuroscience forward," says Tolias, at Baylor College of Medicine.​

Most previous studies investigating the odd menagerie of brain cells have used juvenile mice, mostly because it's easier to get high-resolution pictures of their brains. But there's a problem: Brains keep maturing and complicating as they get older, and Jiang's team believes that their new-found neurons might not form until adulthood.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a18339/new-kinds-of-brain-cells/