Question

What is neuroglia? Plz answer fast

Answer 1

neuroglia is a another term of glue.

Answer 2

Last time on Know Your Neurons, we talked about glia—one of two major types of cells in the brain and nervous system alongside neurons. Glia "outnumber neurons by as much as 50 to one," we wrote, echoing Eric Kandel's widely used textbook, The Principles of Neural Science, which states: "Glial cells far outnumber neurons—there are between 10 and 50 times more glia than neurons in the central nervous system of vertebrates." Other textbooks, including Mark Bear's Neuroscience—Exploring the Brain, make similar claims, as have many articles in the popular press.
Noah Gray (@noahWG), a senior editor at Nature, and Mo Costandi (@mocost), a neuroscientist turned freelance writer, responded to our post on Twitter, citing recent evidence that the 10:1 glia to neuron ratio is a myth and that the ratio in human and other primate brains is much closer to 1:1. We decided to investigate further.
After surveying the research literature, we did not find a single published study that directly supports a 10:1 glia to neuron ratio in the whole human brain. If anyone knows of such a study, please cite it in the comments section. We found many studies from as early as the 1950s that settled on a ratio much closer to 1:1 in the brains of humans and other primates, although most of these studies focused solely on the intricately wrinkled outer layer of the vertebrate brain, known as the cortex, which probably does not have the same glia to neuron ratio as the rest of the brain. The most compelling evidence for a 1:1 ratio comes from a 2009 study by neurophysiologist Suzana Herculano-Houzel and her colleagues, who invented a new, highly efficient way to count cells and applied it to four whole human brains.
Some researchers, however, will not fully accept the new method until Herculano-Houzel directly compares it to more traditional cell-counting techniques. And some scientists who study glia are reluctant to admit that these once overlooked cells might not constitute the majority. Even if Herculano-Houzel's method somehow skews the ratio too close to 1:1, the evidence as a whole certainly does not support anything near a 10:1 ratio. Despite this discrepancy, some textbooks will likely continue to tout the 10:1 ratio as undisputed fact. Ben Barres of Stanford University is writing the sections on glia in the upcoming edition of Kandel's textbook. Although he maintains that no one has rigorously determined the glia to neuron ratio in published research, he is convinced that glia make up at least 80 percent of the cells in the human brain—a conclusion he reached based on calculations about changing levels of DNA in the developing brain.

A selection of different types of glial cells. NG2s may be a new category (Credit: Daisy Yuhas)
The Available Evidence
Since at least the 1950s scientists have tried to estimate the relative number of neurons and glial cells in the human brain. They encountered difficulties right away.
The most rigorous method involves slicing up different regions of a fresh or preserved brain into thin sheets of brain prosciutto, counting cells in each sheet under a microscope and multiplying cell counts by total brain volume. The process is fairly straightforward but performing it on an entire brain takes a lot of time—even when computers and machines help with the counting—which explains why so many studies focus on only one region of the brain.
Early on, however, researchers realized that the ratio of glia to neurons varies from one brain region to another, sometimes dramatically. Several early studies found a glia to neuron ratio of about 1:1 in the cortex, for example, but one 1988 study found a glia to neuron ratio of 17 to 1 in the thalamus, a versatile pair of walnut-sized knobs near the middle of the brain. Further complicating things, the glia to neuron ratio differs from species to species. So counting the numbers of glia and neurons in a chunk of rat brain tissue does not give you an accurate estimate of the ratio for the