The Glia: Squires of the Nervous System

Sancho Panza in Don Quixote, Iñigo Montoya in The Princess Bride, or Robin in Batman—each the slightly smaller role—a supporting character, but worthy of an Oscar. Each remains in the background, but sometimes steals the limelight from the main character. The nervous system is made up of neurons (the main character) and of glial cells (the supporting characters). But what are glial cells? The term glia or neuroglia means something like glue, and was first coined in 1858 by the German physician Rudolf Virchow, who in his dissertation on Cellular pathology based on the physiological and pathological study of tissues during the 20th Congress of the Institute of Pathology in Berlin, referred to a mass of tissue, traditionally considered simply connective tissue, as neuroglia or nervenkitt—that is, neural cement.