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Brain, Vol. 122, No. 8, 1599-1600, August 1999
© 1999 Oxford University Press

Book Reviews

GLIAL CELLS: THEIR ROLE IN BEHAVIOUR.

By Peter R. Laming, Eva Sykova, Andreas Reichenbach, Glenn I. Hatton and Herbert Bauer. 1998. Pp. 424. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Price £95.00. ISBN 0-521-57368-8..

Neil J. Scolding

Addenbrookes's Hospital, Cambridge, UK

The 20th century was long and dark for friends of glia; already dismissed by Virchow as `glue', Sherrington then Cajal nailed the coffin lid shut with their nervous theories. All manner of insult followed—`scaffolding', `supporting cells', `their principle function is to fill the space between the nerves'—glia invariably cast in every kind of non-role. But all the time, recalcitrant gnostics kept the secret flame alight, a small band of scientists watching glia. After all, what do neurons, `the generators of spiking messages' do? Sedentary, solid, unchanging, they discharge. Fizz and vesicles.

But glia can behave: Wilder Penfield was amongst the first to tell us (despite sadly later defecting to both electricity and surgery). In the early 1920s, he visited Madrid to work with Del Rio Hortega, discoverer of both oligodendroglia and microglia, and Cajal. Penfield (with William Cone) observed and described in exquisite detail the morphological changes characterizing the metamorphosis . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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