In the living brain, neurons and their immune cell neighbors have long been understood as partners in a complex ecology — but the precise language of their cooperation has remained obscure. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have now named and described a previously unseen process, skoupocytosis, in which microglia physically extract waste from neurons overwhelmed by their own cellular debris. Observed in the somatosensory cortex of living mice, the discovery suggests that the brain maintains a kind of molecular distress system — neurons signaling for help, and immune cells responding wit