Flushing proteins from the brain

摘要

To rid itself of extracellular proteins, the brain relies on water transport by cells called astrocytes and on the flow of cerebrospinal fluid. This fluid was thought mainly to provide mechanical and immunological protection to the brain. Jeffrey Iliff and Maiken Nedergaard at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York and their teams tracked fluorescently labelled molecules as they moved through the brain.