Astrocytes emerge as key brain cells integrating external and internal information

For generations, science cast astrocytes as the brain's silent maintenance crew — present everywhere, credited with little. Now, researchers at the University of Rochester and the University of Copenhagen are making the case that these star-shaped cells are active architects of perception itself, weaving together what the world sends in with what the body already knows. Their proposal, published in Trends in Neuroscience, invites a quiet revolution in how we understand the brain — and, by extension, what goes wrong in conditions like Alzheimer's and autism.