The latest study in the saga that is adult neurogenesis was just published today: Sorrells et al, (2018) Human hippocampal neurogenesis drops sharply in children to undetectable levels in adults. Nature, doi:10.1038/nature25975 I wrote a brief piece for Nature News and Views but since they have very strict space limitations I…
I’ve previously written about the functional differences between the septal (aka dorsal aka rostral¹ aka posterior²) and temporal (ventral/caudal/anterior) hippocampus and how studies are increasingly not treating the hippocampus as a single homogeneous structure. Myself and others have extended this perspective to studies of adult neurogenesis and now I’m happy…
About a year ago we published a paper linking adult neurogenesis to depression. A causal sort of ‘linking’, right? I mean, we found that, when adult neurogenesis was eliminated, mice had elevated glucocorticoids in response to stress and showed depressive-like behaviours1. So doesn’t this mean that impaired adult neurogenesis could…
Memory manipulation has become one of the most hotly pursued topics in neuroscience. After all, much or of who are is based on what we’ve learned, including memories that we can consciously recall as well as acquired desires and habits that can lead to problems like addiction. In rodents, we’ve known…
So, it turns out that neurogenesis in primates is quite a bit different than in rodents. It’s been over 10 years since adult neurogenesis was first described in the adult primate hippocampus and yet much of the basic work has yet to be done. That’s where this new study by…
“Random” roundup because any posts linking to articles or ideas I’ve recently found noteworthy will never occur on a regular basis (as others manage to do – I applaud you) but only when enough interesting material has accrued and I have a spare moment. The links will, however, not be…
Some facts on neuronal excitability: Excitable: the ability to fire action potentials. More excitable: fires action potentials, but more. More LTP: not the same as more excitable. Less inhibition: also not the same as more excitable, though the two may go hand in hand. The Scholarpedia page on neuronal excitability,…
Wiring. That’s one answer to this question. We know this from topographic maps in the thalamus and neocortex, where the basic units of sensory information are neatly represented in spatially-arranged populations of neurons – the various body parts are represented in specific locations, as are the different frequencies of sound, the different…
If you’ve been paying attention to the adult hippocampal neurogenesis literature at all, you noticed that “pattern separation” is gaining popularity as a research topic. A few quick searches on Pubmed confirm that a trend is indeed afoot. For the years prior to 1999, only 15 Pubmed-indexed papers answer to…
Based on a true story – how progress is made in the field of adult neurogenesis* A group of scientists reduce neurogenesis and report a memory deficit. A second group repeats the experiment, with only a few minor differences in protocol, and fails to find a memory deficit. A third…