ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2023
Building transformers from neurons and astrocytes.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed.
- Targeted neuronal stimulation modulates working memory via astrocytic interactions: Insights from a spiking neuron-astrocyte model.iScience · 2026Article
- Review
- A transformer-based language model reveals developmental constraint and network complexity during zebrafish embryogenesis.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Deficient executive control in transformer attention.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- On the molecular basis of enduring memory in neurons, and cell fate in fibroblasts.Nucleic acids research · 2026Review
- Time-Local Transformer.Computational brain & behavior · 2026Article
- Barcode activity in a recurrent network model of the hippocampus enables efficient memory binding.eLife · 2026Article
- Lipid droplets in astrocytes: Key organelles for CNS homeostasis and disease (Review).International journal of molecular medicine · 2026Review
- Inflammatory Factors Derived From Metabolic Dysfunction-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease: Inducers of Anxiety and Spatial Memory Impairment.Mediators of inflammation · 2026Article
- Astrocyte-Mediated Plasticity: Multi-Scale Mechanisms Linking Synaptic Dynamics to Learning and Memory.Cells · 2025Review
- Computational origins of shape perception.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Ventral striatal astrocytes contribute to reinforcement learning.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Barcode activity in a recurrent network model of the hippocampus enables efficient memory binding.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Emergence of a temporal processing gradient from naturalistic inputs and network connectivity.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Neuron-astrocyte associative memory.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Input-driven dynamics for robust memory retrieval in Hopfield networks.Science advances · 2025Article
- Astrocyte epigenetics as a priority area in neuroscience research.Frontiers in molecular neuroscience · 2025Article
- Deep-prior ODEs augment fluorescence imaging with chemical sensors.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Astrocytes as a mechanism for contextually-guided network dynamics and function.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Driving and suppressing the human language network using large language models.Nature human behaviour · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Glial cells account for between 50% and 90% of all human brain cells, and serve a variety of important developmental, structural, and metabolic functions. Recent experimental efforts suggest that astrocytes, a type of glial cell, are also directly involved in core cognitive processes such as learning and memory. While it is well established that astrocytes and neurons are connected to one another in feedback loops across many timescales and spatial scales, there is a gap in understanding the computational role of neuron-astrocyte interactions. To help bridge this gap, we draw on recent advances in AI and astrocyte imaging technology. In particular, we show that neuron-astrocyte networks can naturally perform the core computation of a Transformer, a particularly successful type of AI architecture. In doing so, we provide a concrete, normative, and experimentally testable account of neuron-astrocyte communication. Because Transformers are so successful across a wide variety of task domains, such as language, vision, and audition, our analysis may help explain the ubiquity, flexibility, and power of the brain's neuron-astrocyte networks.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.