Physiological roles of glial cells across brain regions and brain states

Determine the physiological roles played by glial cells—including astrocytes—in different anatomical brain regions and across distinct brain states, by rigorously characterizing their functional contributions to neural circuitry and brain function.

Background

The chapter emphasizes that astrocytes participate in diverse processes—synaptic transmission, ion homeostasis, glutamate uptake, metabolism, and network modulation—but disentangling their exact contributions is challenging because many signaling currencies (glutamate, ATP, calcium) are shared with neurons. Their fine-scale morphology and complex spatiotemporal signaling further complicate inference.

In the concluding remarks, the authors explicitly identify understanding glial physiological roles across regions and brain states as a major unresolved question, motivating continued integration of experimental data with computational modeling to clarify these roles.