Dr. Steven Barger’s discovery of the seminal factor responsible for communication between stressed nerve cells and glia was the missing link that allowed us to discover previously unknown links between neuronal stress, glial activation with neuroinflammation, and failures in the nerve cell’s ability to dispose of or re-cycle proteins that instead form aggregates both outside and inside nerve cells and, in this way, create self-perpetuating cycles that culminate in neurodegeneration and dementia.