“…A large proportion of glycosphingolipids are localized not only in neuronal cell bodies (Ando, 1983;Ledeen, 1983;Rosener et al, 1992) and processes, but also in glial cells (Hamburger and Svennerholm, 1971;Poduslo and Norton, 1972;Byrne et al, 1988;Asou and Brunngraber, 1983). A discrepancy has been observed among the results of ganglioside analyses obtained from cultured glial cells Brunngraber, 1983, Asou et al, 1989;Bouchon et al, 1995;Robert et al, 1975;Kim et al, 1986;Mandel et al, 1980;Gottfries et al, 1991). Astrocytes are heterogeneous in nature, with at least two major population types (type-1 and type-2) having been described (Hertz et al, 1982;Fedoroff et al, 1984;Raff et al, 1983a;Miller and Raff, 1984;Lillien et al, 1988).…”