Your brain’s unexpected ability to regenerate and how to harness it — SkimNews
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- Ionut Dumitru’s Karolinska Institute team genetically analysed roughly 400,000 human hippocampal cells, used machine learning to find about 350 proliferating progenitors in a subset of post-mortem brains, and concluded this demonstrated active adult neurogenesis.
- Hongjun Song’s team searched individual cells’ full genetic profiles and found immature neurons in people across all stages of life, including a 92-year-old, although such cells alone do not prove they were born in adulthood.
- Arturo Alvarez-Buylla disputed the machine-learning classification used to identify progenitors and said certainty would require following a stem cell through its transformation into a neuron in a living human, a nearly impossible task.
- Orly Lazarov found that superagers had roughly twice as many immature hippocampal neurons as cognitively unimpaired adults, while people with Alzheimer’s had almost none; some superagers still showed plaques and tangles.
- René Hen reported that suppressing new-neuron production in rodents also stopped their response to antidepressants, while his group linked hippocampal neurogenesis in animals to pattern separation, a function impaired in depression and other psychiatric conditions.
- Sandrine Thuret said the debate had moved beyond whether adult neurogenesis exists to what it is for, as at least 38 related clinical trials were underway.
Why it matters: For Hongjun Song and other neuroscience researchers, the agenda has shifted from proving existence to testing function: at least 38 adult-neurogenesis trials are underway, and studies link impaired neurogenesis to Alzheimer’s, depression and antidepressant response. The concrete gain is a defined research program for currently incurable neurological conditions, not an established treatment.
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