Glia selectively approach synapses on thin dendritic spines

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between the morphological modality of 189 dendritic spines and the surrounding astroglia using full three-dimensional reconstructions of neuropil fragments. An integrative measure of three-dimensional glial coverage confirms that thin spine postsynaptic densities are more tightly surrounded by glia. This distinction suggests that diffusion-dependent synapse–glia communication near ‘learning’ synapses (associated with thin spines) could be stronger than that near ‘memory’ synapses (associated with larger spines).