Abstract:
Half of the cells in the human brain are glial cells, which have emerged over the last few years as active partners to neurons in computation. While we have decades of work providing a framework for the study of computation in neural networks, with descriptions at various levels of biological realism, we currently lack a similar framework to discuss how glial cells contribute to information processing. I would like to argue that this represents one of the main challenges in neuroscience today. In this talk, I will be describing how we are trying to address this issue in a data-driven manner. I will be presenting first the results of Cullen et al. (Cell Reports, 2021) on how oligodendrocytes might contribute to a new form of structural and functional plasticity at the axo-myelin complex. Second, I will be discussing how we think astrocytes can separately be brought in a computational framework for neuroglial networks via their metabolic contribution to neurons. I will conclude with some speculations on how to develop better and more holistic models of the brain.