Neuronal Nanotubes

Neurons communicate with each other via their synaptic junctions – the rapid transmission being triggered by electrical depolarisation. But this high-speed nerve firing is not the only form of communication. Recent high-resolution microscopy studies have revealed that brain cells are also connected to each other via a network of tiny intercellular nanotubes (the thin green filaments pictured). These tubes have previously been identified in other cell types where they have been shown to enable the sharing of ions, proteins and organelles. Now, in the brains of mice, they've also been found to promote the transfer between cells of amyloid β protein – the toxic plaque-forming protein associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Neuronal nanotubes likely provide a way for a cell to rid itself of the toxic protein but, in so doing, they inadvertently contribute to the spread of pathology around the brain.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Image from work by Minhyeok Chang and colleagues
• The Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA
• Image originally published with no restrictions –  hence we publish as Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Research published in Science, October 2025