The Development of Microglia
"Sensitive period" has been an important topic in the field of psychology over the past years. This is a very critical period in an organism's life where all the cells are still growing, differentiating and the neurons in the brain are making connections. As one might guess, there are different sensitive periods for developing different systems in an organism. Some of the well documented ones are visual systems, language, and among other things. However, there's none if not few literatures out there on sensitive period for the immune system in the brain. This leads me to my research question which is what kind of mechanism control this sensitive period. The hypothesis is that microglial , a type of glial cell, is the one that's controlling this sensitive period. It is believed that microglial is active during this sensitive period and becomes inactive after this sensitive period.
