I think that science usually works a little differently. People do not choose what they are going to investigate by what is not boring or is a hot topic. Very often they look for (metaphorically) a chink where they can put a crowbar in and open a crack to see some new knowledge. It was a lot easier to study neurons than glia—they stained well, their activity could be measured (a bit) without opening the skull, their electrical potentials could be measured, in some animals they were extremely large etc. Glial cells were not that forthcoming with their secrets and so they had to wait. That glial cells are not glue or just support has been known for at least a decade but what they might be doing was not (and still isn’t) easy to discover. They are not boring—they involve the regulation of calcium ions and calcium ions are very definitely not boring to anyone interested in cellular communication.
The other big motivator is what the grant money is following.
A further note on staining: pioneer neurobiologist Ramon y Cajal got a lot of mileage out of a staining technique which, for reasons he didn’t understand, only stained a small fraction of neurons. Bingo: instead of getting a dense thicket, you get some beautiful branching structures to draw. If his technique had picked out individual astrocytes instead, perhaps glial cells would have gotten more attention.
I think that science usually works a little differently. People do not choose what they are going to investigate by what is not boring or is a hot topic. Very often they look for (metaphorically) a chink where they can put a crowbar in and open a crack to see some new knowledge. It was a lot easier to study neurons than glia—they stained well, their activity could be measured (a bit) without opening the skull, their electrical potentials could be measured, in some animals they were extremely large etc. Glial cells were not that forthcoming with their secrets and so they had to wait. That glial cells are not glue or just support has been known for at least a decade but what they might be doing was not (and still isn’t) easy to discover. They are not boring—they involve the regulation of calcium ions and calcium ions are very definitely not boring to anyone interested in cellular communication.
The other big motivator is what the grant money is following.
A further note on staining: pioneer neurobiologist Ramon y Cajal got a lot of mileage out of a staining technique which, for reasons he didn’t understand, only stained a small fraction of neurons. Bingo: instead of getting a dense thicket, you get some beautiful branching structures to draw. If his technique had picked out individual astrocytes instead, perhaps glial cells would have gotten more attention.