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	Podcast:		UC Science Today
	Episode:		Understanding the brain's interneurons
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:03
	Publish Date:		2017-02-06 18:00:00
	Description:		Historically, neuroscientists have been mainly focused on excitatory neurons, which stimulate our brain and have paid less attention to the calming, inhibitory neurons. According to Mercedes Paredes, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco, it turns out that these inhibitory neurons play a more important role than previously thought. "They make a lot more of synaptic connections with other neurons and play a role not just in maintaining the balance and the activity, but also in the potential for the brain to be flexible." Paredes has discovered that inhibitory neurons, also called interneurons, continue shaping our brain long after we are born, making the brain extremely vulnerable in the first couple of months to a year of our lives. "Inhibitory neurons are the main regulators of the balance between excitation and inhibition in the cortex. When there is damage to interneurons, balance is at risk and it can lead to disorders all the way from epilepsy to potentially neuropsychiatric disorders."
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