Giving Compass' Take:

• Researchers report that important immune cells called microglia are primarily active while we sleep, and how this insight could potentially help advance brain recovery. 

• How can philanthropy help support neuroscience research? 

• Here's how living by nature can have a positive impact on brain health. 

Microglia play an important role in reorganizing the connections between nerve cells, fighting infections, and repairing damage.

The study, which researchers conducted in mice, has implications for brain plasticity, diseases like autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia, and dementia, which arise when the brain’s networks are not maintained properly, and the ability of the brain to fight off infection and repair the damage following a stroke or other traumatic injury.

MICROGLIA: THE BRAIN’S FIRST RESPONDERS
“It has largely been assumed that the dynamic movement of microglial processes is not sensitive to the behavioral state of the animal,” says lead author Ania Majewska,  a professor in the University of Rochester Medical Center’s Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience. “This research shows that the signals in our brain that modulate the sleep and awake state also act as a switch that turns the immune system off and on.”

Microglia serve as the brain’s first responders, patrolling the brain and spinal cord and springing into action to stamp out infections or gobble up debris from dead cell tissue. It is only recently that Majewska and others have shown that these cells also play an important role in plasticity, the ongoing process by which the complex networks and connections between neurons are wired and rewired during development and to support learning, memory, cognition, and motor function.

Read the full article on microglia and how they help our brain by Mark Michaud at Futurity.