Glial scar brain and spinal cord. FGF2 has also been shown to increase astrocyte proliferation "in vitro". Ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF) is a cytosolic protein that is not secreted. CNTF has been shown to promote the survival of neuronal cultures "in vitro", and it can also act as a differentiator and trophic factor on glial cells. Further, CNTF has been previously shown to affect the differentiation of glial precursor cells "in vitro"; however, the influence of CNTF in the "in vivo" setting has only recently been determined. Winter "et al." used CNTF over-expressing transgenic mice as well as wildtype controls that had
Radial glial cell visualized using the electron microscope or high-resolution time-lapse microscopy, through which neurons can be seen tightly wrapped around radial glia as they travel upwards through the cortex. Additional evidence suggests that many neurons may move between neighboring radial glial fibers during migration. While excitatory neuronal migration is largely radial, inhibitory, GABAergic neurons have been shown to undergo tangential migration. Tangentially migrating neurons also appear to initiate contact with radial glial fibers in the developing cortex of ferrets, implicating radial glial cells in both of these forms of migration. As radial glia seem to differentiate late in spinal cord development, near