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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2016 Apr 22.
Published in final edited form as: Neuron. 2015 Apr 22;86(2):374–386. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2015.01.014

Figure 2.

Figure 2

Astrocytes are intimately associated with tens of thousands of synapses through highly ramified slender branches. Astrocytes can influence neuronal connectivity by binding multiple synapses and multiple neurons into functional assemblies, but astrocytes also operate at a subcellular level to sense and modulate synaptic activity at single synapses. (A) A single astrocyte from the neocortex of an adult mouse; note the cell body, multiple branches, and intricate fine highly-branched terminals. (B) An enlargement and surface rendering of the astrocyte processes shown in (A). Curtesy of Eric Bushong and Mark Ellisman at the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research, UCSD. See (Shigetomi et al., 2013) for additional information. The large tick marks are 5 μm in (A) and 0.5 um in (B).