Glial Cells Experiment

Glial cells are now considered to be much more than just the ‘glue’ that holds the neurons together. Dr. Ben Barres played a key role in much of the early work done in understanding the critical role that glial cells play in synaptic signaling. We’re going to look at one of his papers for this discussion.

Read the following paper:

Pfrieger, F. W., & Barres, B. A. (1997). Synaptic efficacy enhanced by glial cells in vitro. Science, 277(5332), 1684–1687Preview the document

Discuss your main thoughts on the paper (200-300 words max). Some discussion points you may want to consider are below. You do not need to cover all of them; they are listed for inspiration purposes only.

1) Why did the authors perform the experiments?
2) What methods did you find interesting from the study?
3) What conclusions did the authors reach?
4) What was the significance of the main finding of the paper?