
Mice with human glial cells are smarter - lettergram
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26639-the-smart-mouse-with-the-halfhuman-brain.html?cmpid=RSS%7CNSNS%7C2012-GLOBAL%7Conline-news#.VHyEoGTF-c9
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reasonattlm
The glial-neuron relationship is an interesting one, and far from fully
understood at this time. New things turn up on a regular basis, such as this
fascinating insight regarding cooperative mitochondrial disposal:

[http://www.the-
scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/41275/...](http://www.the-
scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/41275/title/Mitochondria-Munchers/)

Glial cells may turn out to be a good source of new neurons. Since they are
generated at a fairly fast past, one approach to increasing neural plasticity
is to reprogram glia into neurons rather than try to boost neurogenesis
directly. This is just one of several groups I've seen of late working on
that:

[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141120123136.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141120123136.htm)

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aespinoza
I also find it interesting. Specially in history. In his book: "The Root of
Thought" ([http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-root-of-
though...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-root-of-thought-
what/)) Dr. Andrew Koob, talks about the importance of Glial cells and the
possibility of it being responsible for consciousness.

I think with the new technological innovations in the field of Neuroscience we
might get a better understanding of what these cells actually do in the human
brain, other than "glue" things together.

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chriskanan
Based on the paper's abstract, they look at both wild mice and "shiverer"
mutant mice, which have a lot of neural problems (see this:
[http://jaxmice.jax.org/strain/001428.html](http://jaxmice.jax.org/strain/001428.html)
). I can't access the paper from here, but I wonder if the intelligence
results in the New Scientist article are just about the shiverer mice. Here is
the abstract:

Neonatally transplanted human glial progenitor cells (hGPCs) densely engraft
and myelinate the hypomyelinated shiverer mouse. We found that, in hGPC-
xenografted mice, the human donor cells continue to expand throughout the
forebrain, systematically replacing the host murine glia. The differentiation
of the donor cells is influenced by the host environment, such that more donor
cells differentiated as oligodendrocytes in the hypomyelinated shiverer brain
than in myelin wild-types, in which hGPCs were more likely to remain as
progenitors. Yet in each recipient, both the number and relative proportion of
mouse GPCs fell as a function of time, concomitant with the mitotic expansion
and spread of donor hGPCs. By a year after neonatal xenograft, the forebrain
GPC populations of implanted mice were largely, and often entirely, of human
origin. Thus, neonatally implanted hGPCs outcompeted and ultimately replaced
the host population of mouse GPCs, ultimately generating mice with a humanized
glial progenitor population. These human glial chimeric mice should permit us
to define the specific contributions of glia to a broad variety of
neurological disorders, using human cells in vivo.

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damon_c
Are there any animal species with higher glial cell efficiency than we humans
have?

~~~
arthurcolle
Elephants, I believe

~~~
iak8god
> > Are there any animal species with higher glial cell efficiency than we
> humans have?

>

> Elephants, I believe

I tried to find some info on this then realized I wasn't sure what GP meant by
"glial cell efficiency." I did find a claim that "the human brain has about
90%; and the elephant brain consists of some 97% glia." [1]

Is the percentage of glial cells what you mean by "glial cell efficiency"?

[1]
[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7230/full/457675a...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7230/full/457675a.html)

~~~
damon_c
I guess what I was getting at is, it would be very interesting if there was an
animal whose glial cels had similar effects when injected into developing
human brains as our cels had on the mouse brains in the article.

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charlieflowers
We the human race need to get past some of our squeamishness. These precursors
to glial cells absolutely need to be injected into chimps. We need to
understand what happens. Real lives are at stake, and real quality of life for
real people is at stake.

Caution and ethics are a good thing, and I'm glad we're not ignoring them like
barbarians. But we are too cautious at times, as if we don't fully acknowledge
the truth that real people are dying who could benefit.

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tim333
>In one test that measures ability to remember a sound associated with a mild
electric shock, for example, the humanised mice froze for four times as long
as other mice when they heard the sound

If that's their best example of raised intelligence it's not that impressive.
It could just be that the humanised mice stayed scared longer. Something like
learning a maze quicker would be much more convincing.

~~~
cLeEOGPw
And their conclusion was that "if these mouse stayed frozen for 4 times
longer, that means their memory was at least 4 times better". Isn't that a bit
strange assumption? If both mice froze, means both remembered it. How can one
mouse memory be better just because it acted differently after recalling
something?

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avivo
This poses some interesting questions. Brushing away a lot of (critical)
detail...

\- What is the range of efficiency across the glial cells of different humans?

\- Assuming meaningful variance, can we perhaps transplant "better" glial
cells to humans with "lesser" glial cells?

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goodgoblin
We are going to need to build an even better mousetrap.

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PeterisP
The big question, what else changes?

Perhaps humans with mouse glial cells would be happier.

