traumatic brain injury (tbi) can be caused by a wide variety of stimuli and encompasses a large range of severities. tbi has the potential for long-term and gradually increased susceptibility for behavioral disturbances, seizure disorders or neurodegenerative disease. in the healthy central nervous system (cns), astrocytes play important roles in preserving the homeostasis of ions, transmitters...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The formation of reactive astrocytes is common after central nervous system injuries such as stroke. However, the signaling pathway(s) that control astrocyte formation and functions are poorly defined. We assess the effects of Notch 1 signaling in peri-infarct-reactive astrocytes after stroke. METHODS We examined reactive astrocyte formation in the peri-infarct area 3 d...

Reactive astrogliosis is characterized by a profound change in astrocyte phenotype in response to all CNS injuries and diseases. To better understand the reactive astrocyte state, we used Affymetrix GeneChip arrays to profile gene expression in populations of reactive astrocytes isolated at various time points after induction using two mouse injury models, ischemic stroke and neuroinflammation....

Astrocytes respond to traumatic brain injury (TBI) by altered gene expression, hypertrophy and proliferation that occur in a gradated fashion in relation to the severity of the injury. Both beneficial and detrimental effects have been attributed to reactive astrocytes, but their roles after brain injury are not well understood. To investigate these roles, we determined the effects on cortical t...

Background Astrocytes are specialized glial cells that when exposed to inflammatory factors go through a process known as reactive astrogliosis. Reactive astrocytes neuropathological feature of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The etiology AD is often explained by the accumulation β-amyloid peptides, proteolytic product amyloid precursor protein (APP). However, inflammation also plays prominent role i...

Reactive astrocytes in neurotrauma, stroke, or neurodegeneration are thought to undergo cellular hypertrophy, based on their morphological appearance revealed by immunohistochemical detection of glial fibrillary acidic protein, vimentin, or nestin, all of them forming intermediate filaments, a part of the cytoskeleton. Here, we used a recently established dye-filling method to reveal the full t...

The decline of cognitive function occurs with aging, but the mechanisms responsible are unknown. Astrocytes instruct the formation, maturation, and elimination of synapses, and impairment of these functions has been implicated in many diseases. These findings raise the question of whether astrocyte dysfunction could contribute to cognitive decline in aging. We used the Bac-Trap method to perfor...