What people are saying

“A compelling, entertaining and information rich narrative that explains why the brain’s glial cells - traditionally considered mere ‘packing materials’ separating nerve cells - may be living a secret life of their own. Fields persuasively argues that this ‘other brain’ may hold the key to curing brain diseases such as multiple sclerosis, migraine and stroke, as well as enhancing our understanding of the mind.”
-Richard Restak, M.D.
Author of the bestselling Mozart’s Brain, The Fighter Pilot and Think Smart

“With lucid prose…. Fields makes a convincing case that understanding this ‘other brain’ opens the door to dazzling possibilities.”
from Kirkus Reviews

"A brilliant, indispensable guide to the brave new frontier of brain science. With a storyteller's heart and a scientist's keen eye, Douglas Fields serves as our neural Jacques Cousteau, roving the depths of this thrilling realm to bring home vital truths about today and tomorrow. Buy this book--your brain will thank you for it."
-Daniel Coyle, author of The Talent Code

“…researcher Fields illustrates in this fascinating overview of contemporary neuroscience, a new and equally vital team of costars in brain functionality is emerging: glial cells…Once deemed valuable only as “packing material” or nutritional support for neurons, glia are being recognized for their critical role in everything from childhood learning to mental illness.

In 16 absorbing and accessible chapters, Fields gives life to a potentially dry medical topic by eavesdropping on the work of other neuroscientists, past and present, and shows how penetrating glia secrets offers hope for breakthroughs in healing Alzheimer’s, brain tumors, and even spinal cord injuries. Highly recommended, especially to science lovers…”
-Carl Hays, Booklist Review

"Did you know that the difference between the average human brain and Einstein's is the amount of glial cells? Measuring at about 85 percent of your total brain cells, with neurons a mere 15 percent, glia are the other brain—yet little is known about these cells. Weaving together medical history with cutting-edge research, Fields, a leading researcher in the field and editor of the journal Neuron Glia Biology, discusses the science that is gradually uncovering the role glial cells play in the brain, such as how myelin (formed by glia) prevents neuroregeneration. He also explains how our increasing understanding of glia sheds light on a variety of brain disorders such as Alzheimer's, brain cancer, spinal cord injuries, depression, and more.

VERDICT Fields tells a great story about not only how our brains work but also the labor of discovery. He will provoke his readers to rethink what they know about their brains, whether how the brain communicates, develops, degenerates, heals, ages, remembers, or thinks. Like Norman Doidge's The Brain That Changes Itself, this volume will spellbind lay readers and academics interested in the latest discoveries in neuroscience."
—Scott Vieira, Library Journal

“The Other Brain offers an insightful, complex, and nuanced picture of the most interesting substance on earth: the matter inside our heads."
-Anthony Doerr, The Boston Globe

“It takes a passionate person to make a subject like the brain interesting to lay people. But Dr. R. Douglas Fields is one passionate guy when it comes to the intricate workings of the human brain and how its miraculous and mysterious makeup could be the answer to many mental and physical diseases.

In his book, The Other Brain: From Dementia to Schizophrenia, How New Discoveries About The Brain Are Revolutionizing Medicine and Science, Fields explains in detailed but understandable terms how a substance in the brain called glia is sparking a revolution in the science and medical world today....

Fields' enthusiasm for his research and work shines through his writing in The Other Brain. He is obviously very eager for the normal, everyday person to understand the great significance of these findings and to know how important these new discoveries could be to the human race. Fascinating reading for anyone who has experienced brain-related disease or injury or for anyone just interested in how that lump above our shoulders actually works."
-Sharon Galligar, Las Vegas-Review Journal

"As R. Douglas Fields explains in The Other Brain, we are on the cusp of a radically new conception of how our minds work. Although much attention has been focused on the activity of neurons, they comprise a mere 15 percent of our brain cells; our other brain cells—called glia—have been overlooked as little more than filler. Now it appears that glia do more than we ever dreamed. Glia, reports Fields, are capable of communicating among themselves. Not only do they sense electrical activity flowing through neural circuits; they can control it. Glia do not fire electrical impulses themselves, and so the probing electrodes neuroscientists use to monitor neurons were deaf to glial transmissions. Rather than passing messages sequentially, as neurons do, glia broadcast their messages broadly through the brain.

In addition to describing the major types of glia—astrocytes, Schwann cells, oligodendrocytes, and microglia—Fields explores in detail the ways in which they are changing our understanding of the mind. Everything from immune system responses to infection, to insulating axons, to wiring up and rewiring the brain, to recovery from brain disease and injury, may be influenced by impulse activity acting through glia. We know, for example, that some glia act as sentinels watching for bacteria and viruses entering the brain. Brain cancer specialists have performed experiments in which microglia are used as cellular vehicles to deliver lethal genes into a tumor, while other studies show that glia can help guide damaged axons as they regrow. Additional evidence suggests that glia play a key role in maintaining mental health, regulating pain, processing memories and much more. The Other Brain offers a fresh description of our minds and a new view of how we think."
-Recommended Reading Scientific American Book Club

"More than 85 percent of your brain cells are not neurons. The unsung multitudes crowding your cranium, writes NIH neuroscientist Fields, are glia, cells shaped like sunbursts that insulate neurons with myelin and keep the brain’s environment stable. But these cells are not just nursemaids to neurons. As Fields describes in this fascinating account, glia have links to everything from cancer to seizures to the formation of long-term memories. Fields’ narrative brings readers into the lab, to peer over scientists’ shoulders as they navigate the cellscape with confocal microscopes and electron beams. Filled with flashes of scientific insight, this enlightening account turns the spotlight on the overlooked “other” brain cells.
-Books to Read Now, Seed Magazine

"... Fields, a neuroscientist and senior investigator at the National Institutes of Health (and a member of Scientific American Mind’s board of advisers), is convinced that a glial revolution is under way. Thanks in part to his own research, glia are now being uncovered as critical players in brain development, learning, memory, aging and diseases, including schizophrenia, epilepsy and Alzheimer’s.

According to Fields, glia are like a tortoise to the neuron’s hare: they do not communicate via flashy, linear electrical impulses like nerves do but instead send messages slowly using chemicals that can diffuse broadly throughout the brain, allowing them to influence many regions in complex ways. Fields explains that glia actually control much of what neurons do and, furthermore, that neurons are involved in fewer brain processes than scientists initially thought. “The rapid ‘within an eyeblink’ functions of our nervous system are actually a narrow slice of cognition,” Fields writes. Slower processes—such as emotions, learning and aging—“operate over timescales where glia excel.”

Tackling 300-plus pages about glia may sound like a daunting task, but Fields makes the experience an adventure. The Other Brain reads almost like a mystery: readers start by thinking of glia as witnesses to the various happenings of the brain but then slowly come to realize, through Fields’s colorful anecdotes and descriptions, that they are actually the brain’s primary movers and shakers. Glia have been “hidden in the blind spot of preconceived ideas,” he writes. And now, as scientists learn more about them, “we are glimpsing a far greater universe of brain function than we had ever imagined.”
—Melinda Wenner, Scientific American Mind

"How could we overlook half the brain for 100 years?" he asks.

...One basic reason glia went unremarked upon is that scientists were fixated on the electrical firing of neurons, which could be measured using electrodes. Glia, by contrast, behave chemically. The new images were startling, says Fields, whose own work yielded discoveries that glia interact with neurons in previously unknown ways.

One type of glia, myelin, is what allows us to carry good heads on our shoulders that are not any bigger than a breadbox. "The insulation they provide to nerve axons speeds the impulse conduction 100 times," he says by phone from his office. "It allows the miniaturization of our brains."

Glia were once thought to act merely as hotel maids, cleaning up the detritus from busy neurons. Actually, Fields says, they perform a range of important duties. They take in information from neurons, respond to their signals, control velocity and timing of conduction, act as the immune system of the brain, provide the brain with new neurons and control other complex brain activity.

Through study of conditions such as autism, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, HIV, addiction and spinal cord injury, it is dawning on scientists that glia have a critical role in normal brain activity as well, including learning and brain growth.

Fields also touches on the failings of science, culturally and politically, in the last century. Researchers interested in white matter were stymied for years by disinterest and, in some cases, outright humiliation. Even recently, scientists found it hard to get funding, and Fields and a few colleagues had to start their own journal, Neuron Glia Biology, to get most of their papers published.

The new insights into glia are piling up and already leading to treatments of previously intractable conditions, Fields says. Often, efforts have been mistakenly aimed at neurons. Chronic pain relief, for example, has meant flooding neurons with morphine, risking tolerance, a need for escalating doses and addiction. But glia instigate acute pain, to make us attend to injury and take it easy, and will even work to counter morphine's effect. Chronic pain occurs when glia don't quit that job when they should; new medications, including extracts of marijuana that target pain without cognitive effects, halt pain-making glia receptors. Similarly, glia are responsible for maintaining the integrity of the all-important spinal cord, to the point where they resist any changes, including healing; research is finding drugs that get glia to let their guard down. More targeted treatments for brain tumors, which turn out to affect glia, not neurons, are also being developed.
--Daphne Howland, Dallas Morning News

"Fields is an able popularizer as well as a practicing scientist and for the most part writes in clear and accessible language.

It shifts between engaging profiles of scientists who have been influential in the development of brain science -- a way of explaining how some notions have dead-ended while others have provided beacons for breakthroughs -- and sometimes thorny analyses of contemporary discoveries.

The research Fields reports on is not only exciting to read about, but it also has practical relevance for the understanding and treatment of a variety of diseases in which the glia cells are implicated. ALS (or Lou Gehrig's Disease), for example, may result from a form of glia cells called astrocytes somehow malfunctioning and starting to act as "motor neuron assassins." Normally, writes Fields, the astrocytes, which are "two to ten times more plentiful than neurons," perform several essential tasks. "They provide a physical matrix for structural support, they deliver energy to neurons and remove their waste products, and they react to brain injury by forming scars." Because astrocytes are crucial to the normal functioning of the brain, defective astrocytes can have devastating consequences.

Fields notes that modern notions of addiction, too, implicate glia cells, which also are factors in the etiology of epilepsy and depression.

"The Other Brain" is a wonderful illustration of a paradox that lies at the heart of modern science. While the truths of science are independent of the personal beliefs of any particular scientist, the convictions of scientists and the social settings within which they conduct their work influence the direction and pace of discovery. Stem cell research is a recent example of this effect. As it introduces lay readers to exciting developments in neuroscience, "The Other Brain" also illuminates the challenges that science and scientists face in challenging prevailing beliefs. "
--John Strawn, The Oregonian

"The Other Brain by R. Douglas Fields, Ph.D denotes a paradigm shift in the way we think about the brain.

The Other Brain is written for laypeople and scientists alike. It describes Dr. Field's and others research and findings. In addition, it is full of interesting anecdotes, such as the fact that Albert Einstein's brain, exhibiting no difference between average brains in regards to neurons, had almost double the amount of glial cells as a normal brain."
--Sophia Cedola, Breakthrough, Tufts University

"The Other Brain... has opened the door to the so far underappreciated, but thrilling and constantly expanding, neuroscience field of glial cell function.

R. Douglas Fields, a distinguished neuroscientist who is currently serving as the head of the Section on Nervous System Development and Plasticity at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and is an adjunct professor in the Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program at the University of Maryland, provides an expert account of historical as well as current developments, having himself contributed several important original papers to the neuroscientific community on this topic. Giving a first-hand, behind-the-scenes view, Fields takes his readers from historical places and famous laboratories to his own bench, never forgetting that he may not be talking to the expert colleague but rather to the wider scientific community. Thus, this book is clearly written for a broad readership, from the glial cell researcher to the medically interested scientist.

Rudolf Virchow baptized these brain cells glia — meaning glue in ancient Greek. Glia have been assumed to play housekeeping roles in stabilizing the brain’s neurons, the presumed generators of information and cognition. Overlooked as bystanders to the real game, the critical roles of glial cells for exactly these functions are now beginning to be discovered. In his book, Fields puts glial cells right in the center of brain function, suggesting that these cells play pivotal roles for synapse control, immune system responses, and wiring and rewiring the brain as well as for recovery from and progression of disease.

The book is divided into three parts entitled Discovering the Other Brain, Glia in Health and Disease, and Glia in Thought and Memory. In the first part, Fields introduces the reader to the very basics of glial cell anatomy and biology, writing in an exciting style enriched with anecdotes and historical facts, which bring life to the process of the discovery and characterization of glial cells over the past couple of decades. Here, Fields’s swift writing and use of metaphors makes the understanding of even complex processes, such as the involvement of glial cells in synapse regulation — also known as the tripartite synapse concept — easy, never trivial, but indeed interesting.

Surprises wait on every other page of this book...

In the second part, after a more general introduction, several chapters cover the role of glia in human neurological disorders, including brain cancer, spinal cord injury, infection, and neurodegenerative disease. There are also chapters covering the role of glia in pain or addiction. Each of these chapters is a self-contained essay, making reading quite convenient. Fields addresses the destructive action of glial cells that have lost their fine regulation of cell division (resulting in brain neoplasms) and the divergent role of microglia in fighting as well as promoting brain cancer; he also discusses selected new therapeutic avenues. Likewise, the author describes the more nefarious functions of glia: how glial cells can interfere with the growth of axons after spinal cord trauma or, as a further example, the important action of glia in neurodegeneration. Here again the Janus face–like action of glia becomes apparent: while glia harboring mutant SOD1 may contribute to motor neuron cell death in familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the same cells may, under other circumstances, protect neurons by serving as important source of neurotrophic factors.

Following this, Fields once again turns toward the way glial cells process information in a nonelectric manner and modulate synapse function through neurotransmitter uptake and release, ultimately influencing brain function and thus human behavior even during pregnancy or sleep. Fields then also argues how exactly these mechanisms may be equally important to memory formation and consolidation.

Finally, the book comes along with a set of rare photographs, mostly of historical value, notes, a glossary and a bibliography that serves as an aid for further reading.

After having thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, I believe that most of its readers will find the scientific enthusiasm with which Fields has written his book highly contagious. Readers who are neuroscientists may even consider taking a closer look at these cells when performing their next experiments. Even though the complexity of neuronal mechanisms may be underestimated by the author, this is not the main focus. There are numerous examples of books describing the discovery and importance of neurons in detail, yet the uniqueness of this book is two-fold: it pinpoints the current stage at which glia-related neuroscience stands, at the beginning of new discoveries, and it familiarizes the general medical reader with the importance of glia.
--Michael T. Heneka The Journal of Clinical Investigation