New technologies that can locate cells in the living brain and measure the cells’ individual activity, none of which were used in the Nature Medicine study, may eventually put to rest any lingering questions.Ī number of researchers praised the new study as thoughtful and carefully conducted.
Just knowing whether adult neurons get replaced is a fascinating basic problem,” he says. Alvarez-Buylla says he thinks the scientific debate over the existence of neurogenesis should continue. I wish I could find a place where it does happen convincingly.”įor decades, some researchers have thought that the brain circuits of primates-including humans-would be too disrupted by the growth of substantial numbers of new neurons. “I’ve been studying adult neurogenesis all my life. “I don’t think this at all settles things out,” he says. Alvarez-Buylla, a professor of neurological surgery at the University of California, San Francisco, says he still doubts that new neurons develop in the brain’s hippocampus after toddlerhood. Arturo Alvarez-Buylla was the senior author on last year’s Nature paper, which questioned the existence of neurogenesis. Frisén, who was not involved in the new research, wrote a News and Views about the study in the March issue of Nature Medicine. Now, a new study published in March in another of the Nature family of journals- Nature Medicine-tips the balance back toward “yes.” In light of the new study, “I would say that there is an overwhelming case for the neurogenesis throughout life in humans,” Jonas Frisén, a professor at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, said in an e-mail. A growing body of research suggested they could, but then a Nature paper last year raised doubts.
If not, well then, it’s just one other way people are different from rodents and birds.įor decades, scientists have debated whether the birth of new neurons-called neurogenesis-was possible in an area of the brain that is responsible for learning, memory and mood regulation. If the memory center of the human brain can grow new cells, it might help people recover from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), delay the onset of Alzheimer’s, deepen our understanding of epilepsy and offer new insights into memory and learning.
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