Portal:Nervous system/Selected article

These are selected articles related to Nervous system which appear on Portal:Nervous system.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays a role in executive function, motor control, motivation, and arousal. The largest source of dopamine in the brain is in the basal ganglia. (more...)

The Vagus Nerve Infection Hypothesis proposes that the symptoms of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome are caused by an infection in or around the vagus nerve, the longest nerve of the autonomic nervous system in the human body. (more...)

Acetylcholine is an important neurotransmitter used in the autonomic nervous system. It plays an important role in regulating the inflammatory response. (more...)

Empty sella syndrome is when the pituitary gland shrinks or becomes flattened, filling the sella turcica with cerebrospinal fluid on imaging instead of the normal pituitary. (more...)

Microglia are a type of glial cell located in the brain and spinal cord. They are the resident macrophages of the central nervous system scavenging dead or damaged cells or encircling them when the brain is injured or infected. (more...)

microglia A type of immune cell, called a macrophage, that lives in the brain. For historical reasons, macrophages have different names based on the part of the body that they normally live in. Macrophages that normally live in the blood are called monocytes. Macrophages that normally live in the skin are called Langerhans cells. Macrophages that normally live in the liver are called Kupffer cells. And macrophages that normally live in the central nervous system are called microglia. Microglia were originally classified as glial cells, under the assumption that the cells had a merely structural function, before it was realized that the cells were in fact immune cells. As the "sentinel cells" of the central nervous system, microglia survey their environment for abnormalities such as infection or tissue damage, and then initiate an immune response to fight the infection or repair the tissue damage.