The idea that adult neurogenesis protects individuals from depression is perhaps the single greatest motivator driving neurogenesis research. Not surprisingly, “neurogenesis depression” is the most common behavioral keyword that brings people to this blog (followed closely by “pattern separation”). So I’m excited to say that we will soon be publishing what (I…
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…
For obvious reasons, studying neurogenesis in primates is useful. Primates are phylogenetically more related to us than rodents, and so understanding their nervous system can better help us to understand our own. For over a decade we have known that neurogenesis continues in adulthood in primates and in many ways,…
Sometimes when you say something on Twitter people respond. People don’t respond that much to what I have to say but, now and then, there’s enough of a reaction to help me realize that an idea was meaningful beyond the moment it popped into my mind and made its way…
Everybody knows what the hippocampus is for: memory. And…maybe something about anxiety or depression? Yes – over the last 10 years or so many studies have been published showing that the hippocampus has these two roles and that the mnemonic and emotional functions of the hippocampus are associated with its…
“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…
As we accumulate more and more data on adult neurogenesis in rodents I keep asking myself what kind of impact these new cells could have. The dearth of literature on primate and human adult neurogenesis seems to make these questions all the more relevant. As a starting point, I created…
It’s surprising that it’s 2011 and there’s no regular meeting on adult neurogenesis. There have been neurogenesis sessions at other meetings and perhaps the occasional, sometimes closed, neurogenesis meeting here and there, but nothing regular for all to attend. This Keystone meeting on adult neurogenesis will hopefully mark the end…
Some final observations at the 2010 Society for Neuroscience meeting.
Yesterday morning I checked out the technically-heroic dissection of mossy fiber function from the Tonegawa lab that employed a quadruple transgenic mouse: Mossy fiber input for pattern separation and pattern completion *T. NAKASHIBA1, J. CUSHMAN2, K. A. PELKEY3, C. J. MCBAIN3, M. S. FANSELOW2, S. TONEGAWA1; 1The RIKEN-MIT Ctr. For Neural…
Some posters get more attention than others. Either there’s an interesting abstract, an attractive/famous presenter or, my favorite, additional passersby get sucked in by the gravitational force of an existing crowd. Whatever the reason, I’ve started a game called Photos of Popular Posters (PPP). It doesn’t in any way attempt…
Today was great because there was a ton of hippocampal-cortical posters I was excited to check out except I was also presenting so I couldn’t actually check them out. Plus, it wasn’t like I could just pop over when my crowd died down because they were all the way in…
…and now for what is probably my final pre-SFN post. Posters dealing with mossy fiber function!
Culling through the SFN abstract browser is an imperfect process. Keyword searches can be helpful, particularly if you’re interested in a fairly specific topic, like, say, “1-bromopropane” (1 hit). But if you’re interested in “postnatal neurogenesis” (292 hits) or “hippocampus memory” (1118 hits), make sure your scrolling finger is rested and…
Continuing on… 1) 31.20/C37 – Dentate network activity modulates integration of newborn granule cells *F. KLEINE BORGMANN1, J. GRÄFF2, N. TONI3, I. M. MANSUY4,5, S. JESSBERGER1; 1Inst. of Cell Biology, Swiss Federal Inst. of Technol. (ETH), Zürich, Switzerland; 2Brain Res. Inst., Univ. of Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland; 3Univ. of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland; 4Brain Res. Inst.,…
I have 62 items in my itinerary and I expect to add to it in the following weeks. There are always great presentations I find out about last minute and undoubtedly others that never see the light of (my) day. So fill me in if you have any tips. It’s…
So today the list of “official” SFN neurobloggers was released at the SFN website. And it immediately created a bit of an uproar. My initial beef was that I couldn’t ever seem to find the SFN blogging info without using Google. And also, I would like to know which other…
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…