Silent cells deep in your spinal cord may hold a surprising key to healing after devastating injuries and brain disease. A new study from Cedars-Sinai, reveals that support cells called astrocytes do far more than watch from the sidelines. They help coordinate cleanup and repair across long stretches of the central nervous system, and they do it from far away. Rethinking the Role of Astrocytes Astrocytes sit throughout your brain and spinal cord, wrapping around nerve fibers and blood vessels. They help keep neurons healthy, balance chemicals and support the flow of electrical signals that let you move, feel and think. After an injury, scientists have mostly focused on astrocytes right at the damage site. Those local cells form a scar and shield nearby tissue. Joshua Burda, PhD, a neuroscientist at Cedars-Sinai, and his team took a different view. Spatiotemporal molecular decoding of SCI LRAs. (CREDIT: Nature) “We discovered that astrocytes far from the site of an injury actually help drive spinal cord repair,” said Burda, assistant professor of Biomedical Sciences and Neurology and senior …