Today is Carver’s birthday.** Neurologists have given him a nice gift today: a newly found structure that redesigns our understanding of the circulatory system.

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The tissue is a thin membrane encasing the brain that keeps newly made cerebrospinal fluid – which circulates inside the brain – separate from “dirty” fluid containing cells’ waste products.

It was already known that there are three membranes between the skull and the brain. The new structure is a fourth membrane, lying on top of the innermost membrane, called the subarachnoid lymphatic-like membrane (SLYM). It is extremely thin, with a width of just a few cells or, in places, even one cell.

The SLYM hadn’t been noticed before, partly because the membrane disintegrates when the brain is removed from the skull in post-mortems, says Maiken Nedergaard at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, who helped discover the structure. It is also too thin to be seen in living people via brain-scanning machines.

In both mice and people, the SLYM also contains immune cells, so it may allow them to detect signs of infection present in the cerebrospinal fluid, says Nedergaard. “It is loaded with immune cells.”

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Carver:

LOOK ABOUT YOU.
TAKE HOLD OF THE THINGS THAT ARE HERE.
TALK TO THEM.
LET THEM TALK TO YOU.

When researchers LOOK and TALK WITH the THINGS THAT ARE HERE, instead of looking for grants and talking with government, real science happens.

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** Fussy footnote: Because records weren’t kept, the actual day is a guess. Previously I was using Jan 19 based on KSHS documents; it appears that historians are now using Jan 5.

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More important footnote: The above article doesn’t mention it, but the newly discovered immune layer MUST be related to the also newly discovered marrow inside the skull. The marrow has pores or tunnels that send immune cells into the outer CSF. Perhaps the marrow constantly rebuilds this delicate membrane.