Astrocytes in mouse amygdala encode emotional state The glial cells’ activity reliably tracks with freezing, hesitancy and other behaviors reminiscent of anxiety.

“Based on astrocytic activity alone, you can tell whether a mouse is in its comfort zone,” a new study suggests.

By Holly Barker

www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/ast...

GitHub - forecast-bio/crosslink at main A synced issue tracker CLI for multi-agent AI development - forecast-bio/crosslink

well in about three months I went from AI skeptic to working on our own orchestration tool—thanks @dollspace.gay for the extremely convincing argument, it’s a whole new world :)

github.com/forecast-bio...

Thanks to @ashleyingiosi.bsky.social for this thoughtful primer about our recent astrocyte/sleep paper!

🧠📈 Evidence is mounting for all the ways the astrocyte network—that “second brain” woven between neurons—integrates modulatory signals to shape neural dynamics & brain state.

It was awesome to collab on this investigation on the intricate interplay between histamine and other signals in astrocytes!

Top: Example confocal micrograph showing astrocyte expression of S100β (green), Cre-RFP (magenta), and H1R mRNA (cyan). Left: summed z-projection of all three confocal channels. Middle: RNAscope detected H1R mRNA with white and yellow arrows indicating example WT (S100β+/RFP−/H1R+) and cKO (RFP+/H1R−) soma regions of interest (ROIs), respectively. Right: Cre-RFP expression (top, magenta) and S100β expression (bottom, green). Scale bars = 10 μm. Bottom: Example confocal micrograph showing astrocytic Cre-RFP (magenta), neuronal NeuN (green), and nuclear marker DAPI (blue). Left: summed z-projection of all three confocal channels. Middle: astrocytic Cre-RFP signal with astrocyte soma ROIs overlaid. Right: NeuN signal with astrocyte soma ROIs overlaid. Scale bars = 50 μm.

What's the function of #histamine -1-receptors (H1Rs) on cortical astrocytes? @kiraposkanzer.bsky.social & co show that astrocytic H1R signaling modulates Ca2+ activity, extracellular adenosine & REM #sleep, revealing a key #astrocyte role in sleep-wake regulation @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4gRj9Ap

Back at you! 🥳

Really excited to see this work from my postgrad days come out of its "slumber" 💤 If you are interested in how astrocytes interact with neuromodulatory systems to regulate cortical states, this is for you!

Cortical astrocyte histamine-1-receptors regulate intracellular calcium and extracellular adenosine dynamics across sleep and wake While histamine-1-receptor (H1R) signaling in neurons regulates arousal, these receptors are also abundant on cortical astrocytes. This study shows that astrocytic H1R signaling modulates calcium acti...

Congrats to Charlotte Taylor and team for dissecting how astrocyte networks integrate histamine to modulate adenosine over sleep and wake in unexpected ways:

dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

@vincenttse.bsky.social @maxine.science @trishavv.bsky.social

Brainbow

Important to be very careful about ambient light. Definitely email for specific info, and I can connect you to first author Michelle, too.

Network-level encoding of local neurotransmitters in cortical astrocytes - Nature A study investigates subcellular, single-cell and network-level comunication within the astrocyte network in response to the two major neurotransmitter inputs.

We used it extensively for astrocyte stimulation here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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Fast, accurate, and versatile data analysis platform for the quantification of molecular spatiotemporal signals AQuA2 is a powerful data analysis platform that decomposes time-lapse imaging datasets into elementary signaling events, allowing for accurate quantification of spatiotemporal molecular activity patte...

Fast, accurate, and versatile data analysis platform for the quantification of molecular spatiotemporal signals: Cell www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

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Capacitance compensation

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